Blog

Posted by Giles on March 17th, 2008

Despite the doom and gloom in world stock markets and difficult trading conditions on the high street, not to mention one of the ‘greyest’ Budgets on record, internet shopping continues to be a growth area for businesses.

Those who collect the stats tell us that on average 37 million people a month go online in the UK, that’s about 60% of the population. More importantly for online traders, 76.3% of internet users are online buyers. Equally important, according to eMarketer “Britain has one of the most experienced and active online populations in the world. Confidence in ecommerce is high.”

However, not everyone seems to have caught the vision of how successful online trading can be. Apparently, stats show about half of the UK’s SME businesses don’t even have an internet presence at all! That’s a pity because the potential market is vast and still growing. Last year the average spend per online buyer was £1,591 up by over 30% on the previous year.

So what’s stopping the SME end of the business community getting online? Cost, lack of understanding of ecommerce, inertia, can anybody put their finger on it?

On the one hand, it seems to me that quite of few of these businesses are still spending vast amounts on newspaper advertising. Not that I’m saying newspaper advertising/marketing doesn’t have a place per se, but when you look at the two media side by side, the internet has a lot going for it. After all what other marketing media gives you 24/7 coverage every day of the year?

If cost is an issue, (let’s face it when is cost never an issue?) then a single full page advert for one day in a regional newspaper with a circulation of perhaps 75,000 is likely to set you back £5,000 (more of course for one of the nationals). A quarter page advert in a regional edition of Yellow Pages with a print run of 300,000 copies will cost about £1,610. So what about the web? Well, a basic Search Engine Promotion package for a website will cost in the region of £3,000 for a year, with the potential of first page on Google and exposure to an audience in the millions, not tens or hundreds of thousands.

OK so I might be biased, but here’s another informed opinion along the same lines.

“Research fron the Direct Marketing Association in 2006 and 2007 showed that email marketing generated better ROI than any other direct marketing channel examined.”

So, even if you are one of the half of the UK’s SME’s with a website, the question begs itself are you making the most of the undoubted opportunities online trading offers?

What do you think?

Studio 2 Online are specialists in ecommerce websites. Give us a call to find out more.