Webvisible and Nielsen conducted a survey to know the internet habits of both small business owner and consumers and how they stay connected with each other. It was found that 63% of small business owners and consumers find internet as a prime source for finding information about local companies and among them 82% find search engines helpful. Apart from this only 44% of the small businesses have websites.
Online searches have been extensively used by the growing population in recent times, but the same is not the case with the small business users. They are found to be lying low in terms of media usage and having web presence. 41% of small businesses use online search engines, 31% use yellow pages and only 44% have website. 19% of the respondents reported that they had never or rarely found difficulty in locating the business online which they knew exists while 39% find it problematic to find often.
Among the 44% of the respondents who have website, many find it difficult to create traffic for their websites and are not happy with their online marketing. Among the respondents which have websites, 51% admit that their websites were not successful in attracting new customers, 30% that their websites are better than their competitors websites, 78% say that they and their competitors advertise in same places, 61% use their website for marketing for less than 3 hours a week, 99% of them are directly involved in their website, 65% view that it is necessary to know the details of customers, 9% are satisfied with their efforts, 78% of the small businesses spend less than 10% of their budget on marketing, of which 50% spend on internet internet advertising.
The survey also reported that most of the customers find it difficult to find the information of small businesses like location, store hours, directions and phone numbers.