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• 3. Business Use of Internet

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Use made of the Internet can be roughly graduated from casual through to sophisticated with email at one extreme and the use of interactive and secure Web sites at the other. For each use of the Internet shown in Figure 3.1 and Table 3.1 there is a consistent correlation with the size of the firm. Email is the most used service and is taken here as being a useful surrogate measure of internet connection. Next in importance is information gathering followed by ordering, banking and selling. It appears that medium (6 to 19 FTES) and larger firms (20 or more FTES) use the Internet for banking more than for ordering or selling goods and services.

As noted above, almost all larger firms (94%) are using the Internet for email now and medium sized firms are approaching this level (83%) however only 65% of small firms (fewer than 6 FTES) are currently using email. Of the identified Internet uses, selling of goods and services to customers appears to be the least important function.

Figure 3.1: Business Use of the Internet by Size

Table 3.1: Business Use of the Internet (by Size)

Note: May total to more than 100% because of multiple selection

Analysis of use of the Internet according to location confirms the impression that the bias in favour of smaller firms in provincial centres and rural areas is insufficient to explain the differences observed between the two groups. Outside of the main centres, firms are making less use of the Internet, are more likely not to be using the Internet, and are more likely to not be using computers at all. (cf. Table 2.3)

Table 3.2: Business Use of the Internet (by Location)

Note: May total to more than 100% because of multiple selection

As seen in Figure 3.3 and Table 3.3, analysis of use of the Internet according to business sector gives broadly similar results in each category with a few interesting variations. The largest variance from the overall pattern is in the "selling" category where "construction" firms appear to be low compared with other sectors and "business services", "personal services" and "ICT" are all relatively high, around the 40% mark. Almost 50% of "business services" firms are using online banking.

Figure 3.3: Business Use of the Internet (by Sector)

Table 3.3: Business Use of the Internet (by Sector)

* Sample size too small
Note: May total to more than 100% because of multiple selection

Table 3.4 relates only to those respondents who indicated that they had a domain name or Web site. The margin of error is very large because of the limited sample and any differences must regarded as being indicative only.

Around one fifth of firms with their own domain name do not have a Web site and are presumably using their domain name as an email address. For those with a Web site, 62% are using it to provide online information about their business, with just under 30% providing a catalogue of goods and services and a similar proportion providing some sort of sales service to customers. The "construction" sector appears to deviate from this with only 15% indicating the use of a Web site.

Table 3.4: Use of Web Sites by Businesses with Domain Names

* Sample size too small
Note: May total to more than 100% because of multiple selection