Some 76 percent of small and medium-sized businesses say they get plenty of leads from their websites; 57 said they generate some leads from their sites; and 57 percent said they have made money either directly through, or via offline purchases influenced by, their websites, according to the Summer 2005 Small and Medium-Sized Business Barometer survey by ISP Interland, reports InternetNews. Some 82 percent of SMBs that deployed features such as online payment forms reported that they generate monthly revenue via their sites. Some 52 percent update their websites once a month or more frequently, compared with 37 percent in the fall of 2003.

To market their sites and generate sales, 60 percent of SMBs said they use email marketing; 54 percent said they use search engine optimization; and 27 percent said they use online coupons. Only 20 percent reported using PPC; 19 percent, blogs; 11 percent, podcasting; and 10 percent, RSS.

To measure the success of their sites, more than half (54 percent) of SMBs use customer and prospect comments as a criterion; site traffic (48 percent); sales leads (36 percent) and online sales (24 percent); efficiencies, such as few phone calls (21 percent).