The holiday shopping season may be the most wonderful time of the year for consumers — but it’s the most important time of the year for small business owners. Yet many small business owners find themselves in a tight spot, as the growth of online shopping has made big retailers the go-to for shoppers looking for both convenience and good deals. While e-commerce platforms dominate, many small businesses don’t even have a website—and those that do may lack digital access. This puts them at a disadvantage during the biggest shopping days of the year.

According to Intuit’s 2024 Holiday Shopping Report, holiday sales account for nearly a third of annual revenue for small businesses, on average, with 3 in 5 small business owners saying the holiday season is critical to their business’s longevity. . While the holiday shopping season is short—there are five fewer shopping days in 2024—business owners need to make the most of promotions for both brick-and-mortar and digital presences.

Business owners often use Small Business Week, which falls on the first Saturday after Thanksgiving, to gauge how well their stores will do during the holiday season. In 2023, consumers spent $17 billion on Small Business Week, a testament to the vitality that small businesses contribute to local economies. Deloitte found that 1 in 5 holiday shoppers plan to attend a small business on Saturday in 2024, up from 14 percent in 2023.

However, while shoppers want to support small businesses, they also want convenience and good deals. With increasingly high consumer expectations around an efficient shopping experience, nearly 2 in 5 shoppers plan to spend the majority of their holiday budget at online retailers, and 1 in 5 at major retailers. Plan to buy from box stores where they can find multiple gifts in one place.

In a Wells Fargo and Small Business Majority survey, 3 in 10 small business owners said they don’t have a website for their business, even though the COVID-19 pandemic has forced many business owners to establish a digital presence. persuaded to do 4 out of 10 small businesses without a website still rely on social media to present themselves online.

By lacking a digital presence, small businesses are leaving much-needed revenue on the table. For those who don’t have a website, 2 out of 3 businesses have less than $100,000 in revenue. For those who have a website, less than half bring in less than $100,000.

Analyzing survey data from Deloitte and Wells Fargo and Small Business Majority, AccessiBe explains the opportunities for small businesses to expand their digital presence and attract a wider range of customers.

2024 holiday shoppers prefer to shop online.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many small businesses to incorporate some sort of e-commerce platform into their business model or risk going out of business. While 1 in 3 small businesses sell through their own website, many use existing sales platforms that may require less effort. These include third-party platforms such as Etsy or Amazon, and community marketplaces such as Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace.

However, some third-party platforms are more accessible than others.

Lack of keyboard navigation and descriptive alt text for product images as well as limited or no color contrast are just a few factors that make websites difficult to access for some people. Ensuring sites work without a mouse and on-page search bars and cart icons increase e-commerce accessibility, as do captions on meaningful videos and clear instructions.

Meeting customers where they want to shop has expanded the way small business owners capture sales. More than half of small business majority survey respondents reported that they derive at least 25% and as much as 75% of their annual sales from online channels.

While this increases their profits, small business owners also note challenges with maintaining an online sales platform. The costs of doing e-business can eat into profits, with more than 1 in 3 survey respondents reporting that third-party fees and shipping costs make running an e-commerce site less affordable.

{img title=”Small Businesses Struggle to Manage Sites” src=”https://static.stacker.com/s3fs-public/XhrBI1in3smallbusinessesdonthavetimeforawebsite2XYGW.png” alt=”A stacked bar chart of business owners Percentages are shown that perceive different aspects. Having a website for their business is not very, somewhat, or difficult. Time to manage is the biggest barrier with 73% of owners saying it is somewhat or very difficult. data-portal-copyright=”accessiBe” data-has-syndication-rights=”1” data-focal-region=”x1:246,y1:140,x2:246,y2:140” /}

AccessiBe Small businesses struggle to manage sites.

For a small business owner with few or no other employees, designing and running a website is just one more thing on a long list of tasks that need to be done to run a business, including inventory management, accounting, With operations and human resources functions and more than 1 in 3 survey respondents saying they simply don’t know how to do it, this knowledge gap can lead to delays or uncertainty about leaning into digital business. is

As business owners build or improve their digital presence, accessibility should be an integral part of that development. Complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act is essential to ensuring digital accessibility, but prioritizing accessibility better positions businesses for profitability. The right internal or external developer can take advantage of free open source component libraries and apply Web content accessibility guidelines to create better interfaces that meet different needs. Doing so can help businesses keep more engaged employees and provide a better customer experience that leads to more sales.

However, burying your head in the sand can work against business owners as shoppers continue to shift their dollars to online platforms. Fortunately, many small business advocacy groups such as Small Business Majority, Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Small Business Program, and the National Federation of Independent Business have resources for small businesses. The Small Business Digital Alliance has a free digital tool library to help business owners better understand their digital presence, find new customers, understand cybersecurity and more.

Story edited by Aliza Salario. Additional editing by Kelly Glass. Copy editing by Tim Burns.

This story Originally published access And was created and Distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio.