Partner Article

Digital Dozing - potential of the web for SMEs

‘We must have a website!’ is the mantra of the modern small business. We must have a website, and then we will be able to achieve a wealth of wondrous things. We will spend money on a design, learn how to use a content management system, then we will sit right back and watch our business grow!

It sounds like a good plan, but sadly, real life doesn’t often turn out that way. Websites are an integral feature of the modern business landscape, but for the vast majority of SMEs they’re a massively underutilised tool.

93digital is one of the UK’s most successful WordPress web development agencies and they have been conducting research into how small businesses use their websites. The resounding answer seems to be ‘not very well’!

Although the majority of survey respondents did have a website for their business, a staggering 85 per cent said that they didn’t really feel like they used it to its best advantage to represent the business, or to gain new customers. It’s a huge figure, and yet can’t really be considered a surprise when 71 per cent admitted that they fail to keep their website up to date. So in what areas do small and medium sized enterprises feel that they’re failing in the management of their websites?

Although just over three quarters (76%) stated that potential customers were able to find out the nature of their business in less than five seconds, and an encouraging 63 per cent engaged in content marketing using a blog on their website, in almost every other area less than half of businesses were taking advantage of the opportunities that their websites could offer them:

Only 47% had mobile-optimised websites – the worst culprits for having unoptimised websites were hairdressers, builders and dentists

30% were unsure about whether their website had any clear calls to action (only 42% believed that they did)

Almost half (49%) failed to track web customer enquiries

While 59% had no social media links on their websites, thus failing to access one of the fastest growing areas of marketing potential available.

93digital founder, Alex Price, comments; ‘Small businesses spend a lot of money on website development, often at times when funds are tight. It seems madness that so few of them should then go on to maximise the potential of this obvious resource. Everyone knows that they “should” have a website, but once they’ve got one, a lot of companies don’t really know what to do with it, so it just sits there as a landing page that visitors bounce away from.

‘A good website design is only a small part of the picture - making sure it effectively reaches its target audience is the challenging part.’ Price adds. ‘A successful website will not only engage, but turn visitors into customers, and customers into cash. There are some really simple ways of doing this: accessibility; fresh content; responsiveness. If you’re not using your site to gather information about your customers – in a friendly, responsible manner – then you’re missing a trick. A good web designer can help you to do all of these things, and once you’ve got the framework in place, it will cost you very little to maintain. It’s a shame that so few small businesses realise the potential that is available to them.’

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by VP .