Small businesses are expected to continue to invest larger shares of their advertising budgets in the favour of websites over other forms of advertising according to a recent survey undertaken by Zoomerang and Growbiz Media. This shows that smal businesses will continue to push their websites aswell as direct mail, e-mail marketing, social media and print advertising.

Website Design and Ecommerce Web Design have contributed to the rise above all other advertising forms as more companies understand that the future of their business is linked to the quality of their website. It is estimated that 39% of all small businesses with fewer than 1000 staff are spending around 20% of their budgets in favour of their website and 17% of all small business plan to increase their web spenditure throughout 2011. In comparison 15% reported they will increase their email marketing budgets and 13% their social media investment.

Amazingly only 54% said they had a website design and only 13% had a website blog. Looking into the website features the majority (80%) of websites contained general business information, 45% customer service, 35% lead generration and 30% had an Ecommerce Web Design element.

This shows there is huge room for improvement amongst small business owners to include features such as ecommerce to push sales and a website blog to help with the content and search engine optimisation.

They predict that social media will be the third biggest increase in investment in 2011. Among the 750 companies that were included in the survey 34% indicated they had a social media stratergy breaking down as follows: Facebook 80%, LinkedIn (37%) and Twitter (27%).

The beauty of social media is that is relatively low cost to set up, most companies reported a set up budget between £250 – £1000.

Are you a small business that needs help with starting or improving your current website design, Ecommerce Web Design or social media set up please let us know.

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