Small businesses increasingly get their sales from the Internet

December 16, 2004

Interland studied 531 small companies with under 500 employees and found that 28% of those surveyed expect between 26% and 100% of their 2004 annual sales to come from the Internet.

In fact, 45% of small businesses expect 2004 online holiday sales to be better than e-holiday sales in 2003.

Interestingly, online sales is not the primary measurement small businesses use to measure the success of their Web site.

Interland found only 33% of respondents measure site success by online sales, whereas 47% of respondents cited each of the following measurements — customer and/or prospect comments about the site and site traffic (activity, pageviews).

Nearly 60% of businesses surveyed had been in business for over five years and exactly 57% reported they have a business Web site.

As for the types of business respondents were in, 41% fell into the business services category, 30% were in retail, 24% in personal services and 5% in the non-profit sector.

What do the Interland numbers mean in terms of how far small businesses have come online? According to the Yankee Group, 81% of all small- to medium-size businesses with less than 500 employees had Internet access in 2003 and just 30% had their own Web site.

Source: eMarketer

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