Why do Small Businesses not care about their websites?

Ive been working with small business owners for several years and the challenges Ive heard from most in regards to websites (bad or no site), from most common to least are:

• It will cost to much
• I dont have time to look into it
• I dont understand the value (been in business and have managed without a website this long so why do I need one)

Interestingly, most of these same business owners will not hesitate to throw thousands of dollars into print advertising without being provided any ROI forecast.

That may explain why just having their family member or friend, "who is an expert because they own a copy Front Page or has a pimped out mySpace page.", is given the job.

Mostly they dont seem to understand the potential benefit a website could have to their business.

What we have found, is that you must give a non technical high level overview of what a website is first. Skip the details, as hard as that may be, and come back to those when asked by the prospect.

This in itself can be challenging for technical people, since most of us are speaking over the head of the person were talking to after the first three words.

Also, explaining the return on investment has worked well for us. For example, the number or visitors at a similar type of site in their industry * the average sale price of the their product of service can go a long way. Of course you want to step the number down and be modest and realistic but this will help them see the people buying from them.

They likely did not get that much from the print advertiser that sold them just by saying, you need to get your name out there.

 

Mainly retail business dont really go for a web presence if they have plenty of sales on live...

 

A lot of small business owners may be simply worried about getting burned or taken for a ride by unscrupulous practitioners.

If you can get in the door, a short presentation and perhaps a case study of how a similar business in their area has leveraged the internet can work wonders.