BITKOM, the German new media trade body
Top of the list is Finland. More than 91% of the Finnish companies have a website. 89% of both Danish and Swedish firms, had a website. Norway on the other hand is in great contrast with the rest of the Scandinavia countries with only 79% of the companies being online.
The Netherlands and Iceland were ranked equal fourth, on 84%, while Germany and Austria both recorded a figure of 82%. The UK followed on 81%, then the Czech Republic on 80%.
BITKOM President Dieter Kempf noted that those companies failing to present an online business card were giving away the chance to develop a relationship with existing customers and, more especially, to attract new customers.
Within Germany, most large businesses were already online, with just 4% of those employing more than 250 people not being there, and 18% of small and medium sized enterprises.
The biggest gap, the study found, was for very small companies, those employing fewer than ten people, where just 45% had an online presence.
Kempf observed that small businesses could get online with little effort and at low cost in order to gain wider attention.
A separate BITKOM survey published recently found that those companies that integrated the internet into their business models were more successful than the rest of the economy.
Some 60% internet-savvy companies expected significant sales growth in the 2013 financial year compared to just 46% of industrial companies for which the internet played a minor role and 38% of service providers in a similar position.
