This was my favorite piece of data that came out of the BIAKelsey ILMWest show:
(For the bots)
- Only 13% have a local phone number on their homepage #insane
- Only 24% have an email address on the site #alsoinsane
- 36% of these sites are single page #couldbeofficial
7 Response Comments
Andrew, thanks. Great stuff! In addition to that, if we take into consideration that only about 40% of small businesses even have a website then this look really bad.
It is so hard to be tactful when the client has designed his/her own site.
But, worse, are the ones where they don’t have all those things in obvious places with a clear CTA AND they were designed by a local listing company who has registered the domain in their own name not the client’s!
Thanks for the info Andrew, quite frightening how bad they are really.
Jo, totally agree with your point about domain names. If you’re going to have a presence on the web then it’s generally a good idea to own it yourself.
Tell me about it – SMB’s are my entire customer base. They’re the last frontier – short on money, but long on loyalty. The only known weapon to capture their hearts and wallets is shoe leather, and shoe leather costs money.
Would love to see some good roasts of SMB sites on WebRoast.tv. I know their are plenty of crappy ones that are frustrating someone at this very moment
I operate some smb’s with others and do the “web stuff”. I’ve been doing the web stuff–okay seo, for about 6 years and have been pretty active in the seo world and pretty successful with high rankings for some businesses.
Its crazy time consuming. I have a hard time keeping up with everything that changes and is important.
I know lots of smb owners/operators. Virtually every one I know has no appreciation of seo, but an immediate favorable reaction to FB. FB is user friendly and interactive. Unless an smb operator takes a good look at analytics or spends the time to investigate where their sales come from ie word of mouth, print, or web, they generally don’t get seo. At least none of the one’s I know.
They all need education and a lot to really get it.
Also if you are one of 600 restaurants or 300 doctors or 200 dentists its a delicate deal.
Only 3 of them are going to be ranked at a point where their traffic is significant and worthwhile for the major terms.
Nonetheless….all those low statistics in terms of sites with the most basic of problems….It is an opportunity for SEO’s.
Just call me ying and yang 😉
congrats on foiling the SOB that hacked the site!!!!!! 😀
Oh my God! Only 24% SMB’s have an email address and 13% having local phone number on their website. That’s a frightening statistics. How come? You would have thought that with the way the economy is, businesses would be doing all they can to communicate with their customers. Doesn’t look good!