A NEW study has revealed that less than half of small and medium-sized businesses in Perth have their own website.
A NEW study has revealed that less than half of small and medium-sized businesses in Perth have their own website.
The research by Sensis, detailed at a seminar last week, showed only 48 per cent of Perth SMEs had an online presence; the hospitality sector is driving website ownership with seven in 10 hospitality businesses having a website.
Perth’s construction sector lags behind in the digital arena, with fewer than four in 10 businesses having a website.
At the ‘Driving Your Business’ series of seminars, Sensis spokeswoman Kim Van Prooyen said any type of business could benefit from a digital presence.
“A website is the equivalent of your shop front, so many consumers will go into a search engine and browse just like they would do in a high street or a shopping centre, so it’s important for a website to reflect your business and customer base,” she said.
Ms Van Prooyen said businesses that were unhappy with their site’s performance needed to re-evaluate their web-page layout.
“If you want customers to call you, don’t put your number on a ‘contact us’ page five pages back, put it at the front and make the page as simple as possible for them to navigate,” she said.
On average, people access traditional media such as newspapers and directories only three hours a week, compared to 21 hours of internet access, the seminar heard.
Sensis spokesman Evan Ravensdale said SMEs that didn’t have a web presence or weren’t taking advantage of social networking sites could be at a competitive disadvantage.
“There is still a place for traditional media, but we are definitely seeing a shift in the marketplace. The amount of hours people are consumed by digital channels is significantly more now than it has been in the past five years,” he said.
Ms Van Prooyen said time constraints faced by small business owners and confusion about the technology could be factors in SMEs’ sluggish adoption of the internet as a business tool.
Perth-based Instant Windscreens has recently redesigned its website to ensure that it translates well to mobile devices, considering much of its business is accessed in an emergency, particularly on smartphones.
“We’ve found that young people are driving more, so particularly having a presence on mobile devices is now crucial to our marketing strategy and has helped us grow our business in recent years,” Instant Windscreens managing director Murray McGrath said.
He said the company was planning a move into the social networking arena over the next couple of months to allow it to better monitor customer feedback.
