80% of Jamaican Small businesses not interested in being online?

Opportunities Jamaica 2007-Eighty percent of Jamaican small and medium sized businesses surveyed by Central Information Technology office (CITO) in an ebusiness adoption survey said they had no interest at all in having a website. Of the surveyed group, 17% had a website and 4% had a website with ecommerce capabilities.

This as just one of the interesting tidbits I gathered at the ICT workshop at Opportunities Jamaica 2007 conference, staged by Jamaica’s investment agency, Jamaica Trade and Invest(JTI) formerly JAMPRO. Questions abound from this survey findings. 1. What is the nature of SMEs surveyed-what industries are they operating in, how long have theses businesses been open? 2. Is this survey reflecting the low level of internet penetration here of only 40% 3. The SMEs recorded disinterest, is it as a result of ignorance of the benefits of having a website as a marketing and revenue generating tool for their businesses?

I’ve written before on the frustration of local web development companies as they meet up with clueless entrepreneurs who want their websites for free or for such low fees that are simply a turnoffs for the website development company. I have to add that most if not all of the web development companies do not have dedicated business development managers and are not interested in the level of unpaid hand holding that these Jamaican businesses require.

FACT: There are 49 web dev service providers listed on techjamaica.com. There are 25,000 small businesses in Jamaica and since the start of the year, 4,000 small and medium sized businesses were registered. There is a serious disconnect between the two sides…who and what will it take for them to start speaking the same language so they can both help each other in growing their businesses?