U.K. Online Advertising, Need for Small Business Web Site Grow

Is a small business web site now a necessity for local small business proprietors, or can they continue to rely on traditional media like TV and the papers?  A recent report suggest that businesses should - and are - shifting their advertising focus online to capture Britain’s growing search engine traffic and new customers.

While newspapers are still relied on as Britain’s most favoured advertising platform, companies - particularly small business - should be looking beyond traditional advertising sources to the Internet as the importance of online advertising and marketing continues to grow.  A recent report from Britain’s office of Communications revealed a 40% increase in online advertising, to the point where £2.8 billion was spent in online advertising in 2007.

While a large part of online spending was spent on paid advertising (or “pay-per-click”) on search engines like Google, natural or organic advertising via company websites has emerged as a major marketing component for companies large and small, driven by the deep penetration of internet usage and mobile phone usage into the U.K. market. Proportionally, the U.K. has embraced the Internet and online advertising more tightly than many of its closest neighbours.  OfCom describes the Internet as “a particularly UK-focused phenomenon; accounting for a higher proportion (18.9%) of total 2007 advertising spend than in the USA, France, Germany or Italy”.

Meanwhile, the time that Britons spent on PCs and lap-tops has grown fourfold between 2002 and 2007 - from 6 minutes to 24 minutes per person every day.  As consumers in the U.K. continue to embrace the Internet - and particularly Internet-capable mobile phone technology - having a small business web site that Internet users can access from their desktop, laptop or mobile -will become incresaingly imperative for local, small business proprietors.

The Office of Cmmunications reports that 511,000 new mobile broadband connections were established in the UK between February and June 2008.  Moreover, mobile access to the Internet is increasing rapidly.  Ofcom reports that, “more than one in ten mobile phone users have accessed the internet on their mobile phone with the number of 3G mobile connections growing by 60 per cent in 2007 to reach 12.5 million subscribers – an increase of 4.7 million in 12 months.”

Sesimi.co.ok offers local small business owners a unique and affordable small business web site for their shop or firm.  Sesimi.co.uk builds, optimizes and hosts affordable single-page, small business web sites on its subscription-based small business web domain that allow local shops and establishments to be effectively fournd and ranked by Google and the other search engines when customers are looking for local products and service online - whether from a traditional laptop or a mobile device.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 15th, 2008 at 7:04 pm and is filed under Online Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.