Published 5 Dec 2024

What Can Store Websites Tell Us About Small Businesses?

Discover insights from our research on 300 store websites

We are often fascinated by the success stories of big brands. But behind every great brand is a small business that started with the right strategy. Today, one of the key pillars of running a retail business is having a digital presence. A website has become a standard tool for businesses, and it offers valuable insights into how these businesses operate.

We analyzed the content of websites from 300 small, independent stores across the US. These stores spanned the following industries:

Personal care and lifestyle (including fashion items, beauty supplies, and baby accessories)
Electronics
Home and garden improvement
Food stores
Hobby and entertainment stores
Sporting goods
Pet stores
Automotive and vehicle supply stores
Raw materials
Specialized stores

Now, let’s explore what we can learn from these websites and how they reflect the characteristics of small businesses in the US.

Is every store website an e-commerce store?

The short answer is - no. E-commerce refers to platforms that allow customers to purchase products or services online, typically featuring payment processing systems and a shopping cart. If a website only showcases products and provides contact details without enabling online purchases, it serves more as abusiness card or an online catalog rather than a fully-fledged e-commerce store.

Stores with an online shop and stores with a physical location

Among the small, independent stores in the US, the most common type of website featured both online shopping and a physical location – accounting for 79.4% of the cases. Stores that operated solely online made up 13.5%, while the remaining 7.1% were physical stores with an online presence serving as a business card.

Store types with the lowest percentage of online shops

Let’s take a closer look at the industries with the lowest percentage of online sales. Tire shops topped this list, with only 10% of them offering online sales. This is likely because their products are often sold alongside services, such as tire installation, which requires a physical visit. Only 60% of independent music stores had online sales, which may be due to the fact that many sell used, unique items, making it less practical to list them online. Other sectors, such as boating accessories, jewelry, and medical equipment, also had low online sales due to the specific nature of their products—large, customized, or requiring expert advice.

Now that we’ve identified the types of store websites, let's dive into the actual content featured on these sites.

How UX elements shape store websites?

User experience (UX) refers to the overall experience a user has while interacting with a website. Naturally, the core of a store's UX is its products and the shopping process. While that’s a huge topic in itself (covered in a separate post), here we’ll focus on the additional components of a website’s design.

Colors

Let’s start with what we see first—colors. We’ve already touched on accent colors in our branding post. The color schemes on store websites largely follow broader business trends, but there are some noteworthy exceptions.

Accent colors on e-commerce websites

The most common accent color, used by 21.7% of stores, was blue. Certain sectors were dominated by blue—90% of medical supply stores and 80% of boat and marine stores chose this color. Blue is often associated with calm professionalism, and in the case of marine stores, it is also associated with water.

Red, used by 15.7% of stores, came in second. It is frequently associated with machinery—70% of tire shops and 50% of hardware stores used red. Additionally, 50% of stores selling holiday accessories used red, likely due to its association with Christmas.

Minimalist websites featuring white, without colorful accents, were also popular—50% of clothing and shoe stores, as well as 50% of online florists, opted for this look. The reasons for this vary. Some companies may choose white because it’s elegant and won’t clash with the colorful products they sell, while others may simply lack a strong branding concept.

Green was the primary color for 60% of gardening stores, which is an intuitive choice. Additionally, 50% of office supply stores catering to businesses also used green, perhaps for aesthetic reasons or due to its association with sustainability.

Among the less common colors, 60% of luggage stores used gray as their accent color, and 40% of jewelry stores went with beige.

Customer accounts

Most, 72%, of the e-commerce websites we studied had customer accounts. Customer accounts on e-commerce websites offer several key benefits:

Faster and easier future purchases thanks to saved data and preferences
Order tracking and purchase history
Better personalized offers and increased customer loyalty

Customer accounts on store websites

In some sectors, customer accounts are less common. This could be due to factors such as:

Infrequent purchases based on the type of goods (e.g., party supplies)
Sales models requiring direct interaction with a staff member, such as when the purchase involves a service (e.g., tire installation) or when expert advice is required before buying, as with medical equipment.

Store websites with the lowest percentage of customer accounts on the website

Testimonials

Testimonials are not particularly common on e-commerce websites—only 32.3% of sites had them, compared to 49% in the service industries. That's because e-commerce sites often feature product reviews and ratings instead.

Testimonials on store websites

Which industries use testimonials? The ones that want to emphasize the safety and quality of their products. Testimonials were found on 80% of baby accessories and beauty supply websites, where safety and health standards are critical. Additionally, 70% of boat and marine stores and home improvement stores featured testimonials—important for building trust and ensuring quality. In the case of tire shops, 60% included testimonials, likely because the industry combines both products and services, such as tire installation.

Store websites with the highest percentage of testimonials

Blogs

Blogs on business websites primarily serve to attract more customers and improve SEO—more about that in our blog post. About 1/3 of e-commerce websites had blogs.

Blogs on store websites

Blogs were most commonly found on gardening center websites (100% of the businesses we analyzed), boat and marine stores (80%), and baby accessories stores (70%). These industries likely have a wealth of seasonal, advice-based, and specialized content to share. Meanwhile, none of the tire or fabric stores had blogs, likely due to the narrow focus of their products and the specific nature of their customer base.

CMS

Much of a website’s design and functionality is determined by the CMS (Content Management System) used. Of the businesses we analyzed, Shopify was the most popular platform (33.7%), followed by WordPress with the WooCommerce plugin (12.3%). The rest were divided among a wide variety of providers and custom-built websites. Why are these two leaders so popular? Shopify is a go-to solution offering ease of use and many features, although it’s one of the more expensive options. WordPress with WooCommerce, on the other hand, is theoretically free. However, users must pay for hosting, domain names, and often for paid plugins for additional functionality. It requires more technical knowledge and time investment.

The remaining 54% of store owners who went with other solution than Shopify or Wordpress were probably looking for a balance between complexity of website maintenance and low cost. The market is highly diverse, ranging from traditional website builders to innovative solutions, like our AI-powered website generator.

What contact info is listed on store websites?

Contact information is crucial for both e-commerce stores and business card websites. The e-commerce sector stands out slightly when compared to other types of business websites. Fewer online stores (86%) provide a phone number, while live chats are more common—3.6% of stores had them, compared to an average of 1.3% across all businesses. This suggests that online stores may focus more on automation and innovative communication methods.

Contact options on store websites

As we know, most of the stores we studied also have a physical location in addition to their website - 75% of these stores listed their physical location’s hours of operation and provided directions on their websites.

Store hours for the physical location listed on the website

Summary

After analyzing the websites of small businesses in the US, we can observe that:

A store’s website isn’t always an e-commerce site— 7.1% of businesses use their sites as a business card or product catalog only.
Online stores use live chats more frequently than other types of businesses.
Many elements of store websites, such as colors and the use of testimonials, are closely tied to the industry.
Much of a store’s website functionality and design are determined by the CMS used.

So, whether you were looking for insights into the e-commerce industry, considering starting your own business, or are already an online entrepreneur, we hope you found something interesting in our observations. We encourage you to dive deeper into our research blogs and try out AI-powered website generator.

The data and statistics presented in this blog post come from a research study conducted by IKOL between 2023 and 2024. To learn more about IKOL research methodology and explore other findings, visit: ikol.com/research

Joanna