The stats haven't been updated for a while, so we live in hope that this is no longer the case.  Surely every small to medium-sized business in New Zealand must have a website and be online, right? Er, not quite.

It's almost unbelievable that many small to medium-sized businesses in New Zealand still do not have a website; especially with 8 out of 10 kiwis searching online for information and prices before making purchasing decisions.

The NZ government is obviously interested in making sure that New Zealand is collecting essential data to track and understand how new and emerging technologies are affecting New Zealand.has created a Digital Nation Domain Plan in 2019; a joint venture between the Ministry of Business, innovation & Employment (MBIE) and Stats NZ, so hopefully a raft of updated information will soon be available .

In an article in The Dominion Post and online at www.stuff.co.nz it was reiterated that although businesses in Wellington are increasing their presence on the web, as a country we still have a long way to go. Google New Zealand's Country Manager Tony Keusgen underlined that consumers are ''looking for local queries'' on Google and that there's a huge gap on the internet for local businesses to tap into in order to grow their business. Click here to read the article.

Too often we hear businesses exclaim that they "don't need a website". This is obviously not the case and has been so for some time now. Businesses can no longer rely on their customers' "word of mouth" to bring in business. They also need to focus their marketing efforts on social media on the internet, as well as having a website presence. Even a simple website with basic information and contact details for the business is sufficient to assist with being found through search engines. Try contacting someone by email if you don't have their email address and they don't have a website!  It's just about impossible to reach them - it's not as if there is an email directory out there like the old phone books we had last century. You might have to resort to posting them a letter, if you know their street address, that is.

Purchasing Google ad words is another way for businesses to increase their chance of being found in search engines, which again, many businesses are failing to take advantage of.

In today's society and economic climate, a company's online presence is invaluable with the direction the internet is heading in, and the platforms that consumers are using to gather up-to-date information and real-time data. For example, as outlined in the referenced article in this blog, tradespeople are now receiving a good portion of their business off the web. Although your average tradesperson doesn't sit at a computer all day waiting for business to appear, with the increasing use of smartphones as a tool for today's consumers they can receive and do business on the go. With features made available by our CMS product MoST, a tradesperson has the opportunity to market themself online, to receive and deal with inquiries about work, and receive payments for work completed whilst on the job. With the right online set-up, the tradesperson can also analyse their client database for payments and invoices that are relevant to work completed.

If you know of a small to medium sized business without a website, get them to give us a call and we'll help them bring in the business.