Articles: Growth in e-Commerce mico-businesses
Date Added: 16/09/2013 @ 11:05am
It seems that the UK is in the midst of an enterpreneurial boom with e-commerce websites increasing by nearly 20% in the last year.
A recent survey of 300 thousand businesses carried out by freelance job advertiser, Freelancer.co.uk, the entrepreneurial boom is not restricted to the South, with new start ups being just as likely in the North.
The biggest growth in micro-business start ups has been in the Newcastle and Brighton where growth of 24% was found. This was followed closely by a similar increase of 23% in Manchester and Southampton.
The capital saw a 21% increase, 20% in Edinburgh and Liverpool, with both Birmingham and Edinburgh seeing 19% growth. While Sheffield saw the smallest increase in the UK, it did still see an increase of 8%.
While the confidence of many Small-Medium sized enterprises (SMEs) is still mixed, these figures seem to back up the recent economic statistics that suggest that the UK is slowly showing signs of recovery. However, this data also suggests that increasingly people are seeing a micro-enterprise as a way of boosting the value of their main wages falls.
E-commerce growing
The Freelancer study found that a growing number of micro-businesses (19%) in the UK had hired web developers (whether externally or as part time staff) to add e-commerce capabilities to existing websites or to redesign their websites to focus on sales.
Similarly, there was a 20% increase in smaller companies looking to reach existing customers via Email marketing to increase sales.
"This study shows that a clear picture is emerging. Starting a micro-businesses is easier than ever and is less risky with small start-up costs. Many of the people in this study set up businesses alongside their own jobs hiring in freelancers for short projects to help get the business off the ground before leaving their job to run the business full time," commented Bill Little, the European director of Freelancer.
"The jobs that businesses are outsourcing are essential to setting up and growing a business, so it is not surprising that so many of these jobs are growing so quickly. It provides extra evidence that there is an entrepreneurial microbusiness boom happening across the UK."
Based on the SmallBusiness.co.uk article: 'More people in the UK starting up a small business than a year ago'
If you're looking for help starting up an e-commerce website, or would like to start selling your products or services online, give us a call on 07817 8518156