News

SCORE research says most smaller e-commerce sites have no call to action

SCORE, which has provided mentoring services to small businesses since 1964, has gathered statistics concerning how much online activity consumers engage in prior to a purchase and how well small businesses' websites are rising to the challenge of fulfilling these consumers' needs for information.

December 30, 2014

SCORE, which has provided mentoring services to small businesses since 1964, has gathered statistics concerning how much online activity consumers engage in prior to a purchase and how well small businesses' websites are rising to the challenge of fulfilling these consumers' needs for information.

According to data presented visually in the infographic, consumers research a purchase heavily online prior to making a purchase:

• 97 percent of consumers search online for products & services
• 70 percent compared prices or read reviews
• 88 percent have been influenced by an online review
• 91 percent have visited a store because of an online experience
• 37 percent use the internet to find a store at least 1x/month

While more and more consumers are searching and purchasing online, small business websites aren't doing all that they can to be found as potential providers for these products and services. Only 51 percent of small businesses even have websites but of those that do:

• 70 percent have no call to action
• 27 percent don't provide a telephone number
• 68 percent don't have an email address on the home page
• 82 percent don't have social media accounts
• 56 percent don't have meta data to improve searches

Of consumers surveyed, 4 out of 5 have used a smartphone to shop and 96 percent researched a product or service on their phone. Seventy-three percent of mobile searches trigger follow-up sharing, calls, sales or store visits. Sadly, small businesses are not cashing in on this trend — 93.3 percent of SMB websites are not mobile compatible.

The infographic is available for download here.