60% SMB websites have no contact details
May 21, 2012
SMB DigitalScape, the tracking study from vSplash that has analyzed one million websites so far, presented updates at Search Starts Here as follows:
- 60% were missing either a toll-free or local telephone number on the home-page.
- Almost three-quarters were missing an email contact link on the homepage.
- Two-thirds were missing any type of form to allow consumers to request information or provide feedback.
For heaven’s sake, when consumers go to a brick-and-mortar store, they want to be able to enter it (and probably buy), not just look through the glass. The store must have an easily accessible entrance or they will walk away. Likewise, when potential customers visit an SMB website, they want to be able to easily find the contact information (and probably avail the service). If they have to navigate around to locate the contact details, they’d rather navigate away from the website.
Miguel Leiva Gomez writes in his blog that if spam is what SMBs fear, then there are other ways to deal with it than hiding contact details from potential customers. In comments on Matt McGee’s blog titled, “Are Small Business Websites Really This Bad?“, those from the industry have shared personal experiences of how SMBs don’t understand what their website is capable of and how some even work backwards to send a caller to the website for more information!
SMBs face displacement threat from technologically agile, wherewithal-possessing national players, who are probably already doing market research with a view to launch themselves in the so far local-provider prevailing service sphere. The local beauty salons or automobile repairs or home-remodelers may lose out to big-game players, just because the latter are more adaptable to changing times and easily accessible to tech savvy, local-search-centric, mobile- wielding, social-media-dwelling consumers.
Strengthening/upgrading the SMB web-presence is a large opportunity for SMB providers and resellers. However, the latter also have the responsibility of awakening SMBs to the local, social and mobile transformation that SMBs seem to be oblivious to. How do we persuade internet shy SMB advertisers that they must survive the internet marketing revolution?
Even small businesses that haven’t invested in a Web site would do well to think about their presence in mobile search engines and on the mobile Web. That’s because smartphones are increasingly replacing the notion of local “yellow pages” directories. So, small businesses that might have gotten away with skipping the Web because they were focused only on local clientele probably don’t have that luxury when it comes to interacting with customers who happen to be mobile.
I feel your annoyance. I never had any good luck with this stuff, either.
So happy to know I’m not alone!
It`s true, so many websites do not have the contact details mentioned clearly, or not provided at all.
A lot of these SMBs operate from home and are one man bands. They don’t want to advertise their home address or use a landline.
An alternative would be to use a virtual number that redirects to a mobile and a virtual mailing address.