Major sectors in Canada include:
- Wholesale trade
- Retail trade
- Transportation
- Warehousing and manufacturing
82% of businesses in Canada use the Internet and 38% have a website (haha, this mean 2/3 businesses in Canada have no website, come on!). We need to get more businesses into the fold as 2/3 of our businesses are not even a part of all the google juice, blog love and 2.0...
Canada 2.0 means at least 50% of business should be online in 2010. From what I've seen, major sectors like construction, local services, restaurants, fitness centers, local businesses and the like are not taking advantage of the edge the Internet can provide over traditonal brick-and-mortar only competitors.
One other major factor you need to take into account is that "e-commerce as we know it", which is more "B2C e-tailing", probably represents ~5% of the overall online sales shown by this article. I will try to dig into that to get critical data of that so called "5%". Please share your thoughts - I want to know of anyone who's using the web successfully as a platform for business in Canada (surely SEOmoz has a few Canadian readers).
P.S. Canadian sites only (don't worry you guys in the US, you've got a default, geographic head start).
Thanks for this post Guillaume.
I have been a Canadian web developer for over 12 years now and there is a niche out there if youre willing to develop for small businesses and that usually means holding their hand a good part of the way.
It's fine if your client has a willingness to learn and they usually 'get it' after being online for about a year.
It's convincing them how important it is to keep their site maintained and fresh.
Also once they also realise that every existing client they have also now have email addresses and adding email marketing to their mix can be much more cost effective and sometimes, depending on the industry, much larger ROI
As simplistic as this may sound I have asked many a CDN business if they would send out their marketing piece/ad/special that they had 3 years ago..and of course the answer is always the same.
Build it and they will come does not apply as we all know.
Web developing is usually an added expense to their budget they dont consider...and when they hear the hourly rate (even the low end) that web dev's make..it scares them even more.
This can apply to all small businesses I realise but Canadians, I have found, even more so.
I would really be interested in anything else you find out in this area as well Guillaume, I am only happy to take on the little guy as clients. 90% of my business comes via word of mouth from small business.
I am not getting rich, but I am surviving because of them
Great post Lerosia! It's funny, our company, NVI, feels more like a school than a real business. We train businesses to earn new benefits / better ROI through Internet as a global media and "synergy provider". For SME, it seems somehow impossible to generate leads through Internet as they think the major companies are taking most of the space... This statement is false in many ways, as Internet is probably one of the last media where major companies do not tap it 95% of the revenues. Internet saved many SME's that would just have ceased to exist if they could only advertize through offline media.
I'll be keeping an eye on more data for Canada in the near future. Now, my vlog post and project is keeping me really busy :D
I'll prepare a "opinion/on the field report concerning that in a near future". The office has been crazy!
As a Canadian Comparison Shopping Engine, Shoptoit.ca experiences ALL of these problems. Very few Canadian retailers have websites and some even ditch the ecommerce after they get it going! In my experience many web-savvy retailers aren't focusing locally but target their sites to the US. We require that retailers list their products in Canadian $$ and many retailers just say "Why bother? 80% of our sales come from the US and Canadians are used to buying online is USD anyways..."
I do find Canadian businesses naturally tend to focus on local markets, but many can successfully adapt to become national and international players.
Canada will always have strong economic ties to the US, and many markets both online and offline overlap. Canadian etailers can do well targeting the US market, or going after both the US and Canadian markets. There's always external factors to consider that can wreak havoc with business models, particularly the recent currency issues; either a windfall or a curse depending on your model.
Pharmaceuticals played a large role as a driving force developing ecommerce in Canada and really opened a lot of people's eyes, especially in Manitoba where thousands of jobs were created and millions of dollars made building the online pharmacy industry. There are many in the business community here well aware of the power of doing business online, both internationally and in relatively untapped local niches.
Guillaume,
Thanks for this post.
As someone who’s been involved in the Canadian web world for over 11 years now, I can really appreciate its significance. A 11 years ago I felt like I was spinning my wheels just explaining to companies why they needed a web site. Some got it, some didn’t but eventually most medium to large business built something.
The problem that I see here in Canada is a bit complex but breaks down into a couple of issues.
1. Market size – Canadian companies only think of marketing to Canadians. So that means a market size of 30 million people (about the size of California) but this market is spread out across the second largest country in the world. So if you have a local or regional service (say you target market is within 50-100 km) then you have a very small target audience for your web site and it even gets smaller when you break it down by your demographics within that area. 2. Many business in Canada are small businesses and have limited budgets 3. Cost to Develop – given the audience limitation from point 1 & 2, the amount of money companies are willing to spend on their web site is dramatically less then their American counterparts. So no half good web master is going to want to do anything for them and they are left to the self service model which most of us know is just too complicated for many small business owners and they opt for local advertising because they can see an immediate return
The irony of all this is that Canada is one of the most wired countries in the world and most Canadian’s are early adopters of new technology.
From what I have observered that stats may hold true across the country but in big market areas like the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) and for larger companies, they do have web sites and are even now starting to think of SEO and SEM.
Based on my economics and business background, the reality is that demand has to be there first unless a company can spend enough to create the demand through extensive marketing. So until Canadians start complaining to local business on why they don’t have a web site, don’t expect a dramatic change in the current web reality.