Small & Medium Business Internet Survey
What Percentage of Small & Medium Businesses have Websites?
The proportion of Small & Medium Businesses with a website remains unchanged compared to the previous year. With approximately 66% of businesses having some form of website. 9% of SMEs indicated their intention of having a website within the next 12 months. 69% of SMEs that have a websites reported that having a website improved their business, by mainly increasing their exposure.
Expenditure on website maintenance remained stable in the past year. SMEs reported an average spend of $3,600 last year on building and maintaining their websites, down $400 on average in the past year.
Social media and Small & Medium Enterprises.
39% of SMEs reported using social media for their business. Most commonly the usage of social media was a Facebook page promoting their business. Over 50% of SMEs that used social media reported a positive impact on their business.Small & Medium Enterprises online
The rate of internet connectivity among SMEs businesses remained unchanged for the year. Internet connectivity among small businesses dropping
marginally from 96 per cent to 95 per cent. 95 % of SMEs with internet access have broadband internet, which is down one percentage point compared to the past year. 28 per cent of SMEs with internet connection have the intention to get a faster connection within the next 12 months. This is up 6% compared to the previous year. This is the first year that businesses with the high high speed NBN connection was recorded in the sample. 2% of online
businesses were connected via the NBN.
The most important factor for use of the internet (as identified by 95% of all internet-connected SMEs) remains email.
The next most important uses of the internet was internet banking, looking for information about services and products and searching for suppliers of products and services, reflecting the importance of the internet for B2B transactions.
Placing orders for products and services saw the greatest growth in SME usage in the past year, with
around half of uses increasing.
SME Buying and Selling Online
There has seen a rise in the use of the internet for purchasing. Most other parts of the procurement process recorded falls. 78% per cent of SMEs reported purchasing online and, on average. SMEs that purchased online reported that they placed 41 per cent of their total procurement online, up two percentage points.
The proportion of SMEs that indicated they did the majority of their business online rose five percentage points to 34 per cent of SMEs that purchase online.
Equipment, office supplies, stock and merchandise, airline and accommodation bookings were the most commonly purchased items online by SMEs. SMEs reported making 14 per cent of their online
purchases from overseas businesses, up one percentage point in the past year.
Business Internet Survey
Online selling by SMEs decreased slightly during the past year. The percentage of SMEs taking orders online dropped two percentage points to 54 per cent. However, for those SMEs that sold online, online selling as a share of total sales activities rose during the year, increasing from 32 per
cent to 37 per cent. Some 29 per cent of SMEs who used e-commerce to sell made the majority of their sales online, which was up four percentage points in the past year.
The number of SMEs receiving payments online for sales made over the internet also fell, down five percentage points to 65 per cent in the past year.
Once again, SMEs were most likely to report that they were making sales online to customers in their local area, with 45 per cent reporting they mainly sold to customers in the same city or town. Of those SMEs that sold online, 26 per cent had made sales to customers overseas.
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