SMEs and the Web - Executive Summary

Over the last few weeks I have been conducting an online survey of UK SMEs and how they use the Internet/Web to communicate, share information and market themselves. The survey was carried out amongst 2 groups of SMEs: Those operating in the Internet/new media sectors in the South East of England (Digital SMEs) and a more general group of SMEs operating across the UK and a range of sectors (All SMEs). Over 500 companies completed the survey and there are some interesting findings:

• More than 95% of all the respondents maintained a Web site;
• Apart from email, instant messaging is the most used (46%) tool for internal communications amongst Digital SMEs;
• Over 40% of Digital SMEs use Skype for communicating with clients and suppliers;
• Digital SMEs are active in their use of Web services such as Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs as tools for marketing their services;
• Digital SMEs are approximately 4 times as likely to use blogs and wikis for communicating with clients and suppliers than the group, All SMEs.

You can download a PDF copy (600kb) of the executive summary from the link below:

http://www.coldlime.com/SMEWebSurveyJul08.pdf

July 17th, 2008