Features

SMBs Outsourcing Web-based Professional Services on the Rise

By Sophia Mayengbam

Having a web site to your promote business or sell products is an imperative step to make your business a success. The company website is an open shop, opened 24/7, and it is important that it attracts viewers to have a closer look at it. Giving a professional look thus need professional expertise to design your website. Most organisations have a dedicated team to design and maintain the company website. However, it is an expensive affair for the small and medium business (SMB).

According to a research by Yankee group, SMB market opportunity for web-based professional services is burgeoning because most SMBs lack the time, technical expertise and Internet marketing skills to establish and maintain a professional-looking web presence on their own.

As the accessibility of Internet grows, Web-based services enable SMBs and mid-market enterprises to capitalize on online marketing, advertising and e-commerce sales tool benefits, resulting in greater return on investment for their marketing strategies and increased leads and revenue.

Yankee Group finds that within the United States:

Web-hosting market revenue will rise from .4 billion in 2005 to USD 5.4 billion by 2010.
The web-based services market will grow from USD 2.9 billion in 2005 to USD 4.1 billion in 2010.
Online marketing and advertising spending will grow from USD 1.3 billion in 2005 to USD 9.3 billion in 2010.

According to Shifting Web-Hosting and Services Market Dynamics, Part 2: SMBs Accelerate Adoption of E-Commerce and Online Marketing, a Yankee Group Report, SMB marketing channels are diverse, which creates an enormous market opportunity for online marketing service providers.

As SMBs become increasingly interactive and e-commerce enabled, their adoption of online marketing tools to advertise their businesses will also climb. Currently, about 39 percent of US SMBs sell and conduct e-commerce on their web sites, which is a 5 percent increase from 2004. However, as the search marketing area gets more complicated and the online marketing and advertising stakes get higher, SMBs are turning to specialists to outsource their online marketing initiatives.

"The area of online and search marketing has become too complicated for SMBs to tackle on their own," said Sanjeev Aggarwal, Yankee Group Small & Medium Business Strategies senior analyst. "SMBs and mid-market enterprises will rely on professional web services companies that can help them test, learn, optimize, maintain and enhance their online web presence, e-commerce and online marketing, which generates a greater impact on their business."

Yankee Group said although SMBs' adoption of web sites has significantly increased to about 65 percent in 2005, about 30 percent of very small businesses (2 to 19 employees) and about 15 percent of mid-market enterprises (500 to 999 employees) still lack a web site.


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