Membership in those segments had a relationship to business performance. “Interactors,” the most active participants online in almost all respects, accounted for only 15% of businesses but 24% of sales. “Transactors,” somewhat less active online but the group most involved in online selling, also overindexed in sales. The least involved groups, “viewers” and “commentators,” also exhibited the worst business performance.
Even in popular categories, such as using the Internet to buy business products and services, interactors outpaced users in other segments. They were also more likely than average to check business news (79%), local and regional news (75%) and collect information on their competitors (51%). By contrast, just 17% of viewers and commentators, 26% of investors and 46% of transactors used the Web to check up on the competition.
“Interactors are really serious about using technology and the Internet to help their business,” said Jessie Shaw, deputy director of research at American City Business Journal. “It’s clearly their first destination for just about everything for their business.”
Only a minority of small-business owners surveyed were involved in social media such as Twitter and blogs, and commentators - the group that spent the most time with such activities - generally had underperforming businesses. Those small-business owners who fell into the commentators segment, however, participated in very little else, indexing well below average in areas such as news, education and training, and even travel planning and shopping.
