SME : Web sites profit beyond the visibility.

Article is translated - Appeared in french at http://www.silicon.fr

Posting yourself on the internet is the first motivation for an SME (small medium enterprise) which creates its web site, but quickly the motivation progresses, and visibility is not the only criteria anymore .

The barometer 'Summer 2005 Small and Medium' from Interland, devoted to the online American SME's, marks the evolution of the approach of the internet on the majority of the companies.

The presence of a web site which conveys the image of the company on the Net is not their principal preoccupation. For 76% of the US companies that dispose of a web site, the priority is in commercial contacts, 'leads', furnished by the site. 57% of those have indicated that these leads have generatedsome revenues, directly on the site or via off line purchases that were influenced by the site.

The step towards e-commerce, to transofrm a web site into a merchant site, while accompanying with an online payment solution, is also very renumerative. 82% of american SME's that have reached this step attest that their web site generates monthly revenues.

The SME's

How do american SME's show their presence online ? 60% target e-mail marketing shares ; 54% optimise their referencing in order to be found on search engines; 27% propose e-coupons, coupon reductions that are downloadable, a typical american step.

In turn, they are only 20% who are willing to venture to the 'pay-per-click' (Google Adwords, Yahoo Overture, and other sposorised links). We have a better understanding of why the web giants attack the SME market. 19% of them propose blogs. 11% pratice 'podcasting' audio and video downloading on numerical wlakmans. And 10% RSS, data fluxes that can be downloaded automatically.

Another fact reveals the ever growing interest of the SME's for the web. In 2003, they were only 37% of them that updated their web sites at least once a month. The contents on the majority of these sites was therefore obsolete. Today, there are 52% of them that assure the minimum monthly update, a number and a frequency that continues to rise for the online in the past year.

Article conclusion

Finally, the study shows what criteria is kept by the SME's to evaluate the success of their web sites : 54% priviledge the comments of their clients and their prospects ; 48% measure their traffic ; the commercial contacts (leads) arrive in third position with 36%. And in the fourth position , the online sales at 24%. Again, for 21% of them, telephone calls are the criteria of effectiveness.

As we have just seen, a web site has become a commercial and communicating tool that is indispensable for the SME's that have created their sites.