Only 38% of Small/Medium business in Australia have a website, according to research by MYOB Business Monitor (via Smart Company). While this is a 1% improvement in the last year, it is well below the peak of 47% back in October 2010. That means, on the balance, one fifth of those businesses have dumped their websites.

Smart Company suggest that the decline is a combination of the GFC and social media. The GFC makes sense, because the decline begun when the GFC was kicking in, and traditionally small businesses have paid substantial fees for basic web development and hosting (don’t worry, we aim to fix that…).

Social media is very exciting, but you would be a fool to ditch your website and have only a social presence – that would be the same as cancelling your phone service when email was invented. Smart Company have this to say:

This blog has certainly been bullish about the benefits of social networking for many smaller businesses, but certainly not at the expense of the website which, despite the influx of brash new challengers, remains the cornerstone of a professional online presence.