Netflare, a marketing strategy firm in the UK, recently completed a survey of small businesses in multiple sectors. The results show that SMBs still aren’t leveraging the Internet as a convenient way to simultaneously increase revenue and decrease spending.

In some cases, the businesses had a Web site, but didn’t keep it up-to-date! In fact, 23% of the small business Web sites in the survey hadn’t been updated since their launch, meaning much of the content was obsolete or inaccurate. The average age of a Web site was 4 years—that’s a lot of time for a business to change inventory, focus and pricing!

The survey also found that only 8% of respondents had e-commerce technology on their Web sites. Here’s what Netflare’s Jon Beal had to say about those results:

“We were completely staggered by the tiny percentage of small business owners who were actively using their Web sites to generate sales.”

A majority of the small business owners indicated they wanted to use their Web site to increase sales. Beal said, “It is beyond comprehension that small business owners are ignoring one of the fastest growing sales opportunities there has ever been…the fact that small businesses are neglecting this huge and growing marketplace is astonishing.”

So what’s keeping businesses from doing more with their sites? “It seems that once small business owners have a Web site, they do not really know what to do with it so they ignore it,” Beal said.

With the help of our web solution, business owners can see the value of a well-designed, up-to-date Web presence. From those crucial e-commerce solutions to site promotion tools, the Web site we provide will be equipped with everything required to reach that ‘huge and growing marketplace’ Beal is talking about!