No U.S. federal statistical agency publishes a direct count of how many small businesses have a website, so every percentage in circulation comes from a private survey with its own sample and its own definition. What the government does measure is where retail spending is going, and that number keeps climbing.
How many small businesses have a website?
There is no official federal count. The Census Bureau, the Small Business Administration and the Bureau of Labor Statistics all publish detailed small business data, but none of them measures website ownership directly. The figures you see quoted, usually somewhere between 70% and 85%, come from private surveys run by website builders, hosting companies and marketing firms.
Those surveys disagree with each other for reasons worth understanding before you cite any of them. They define a website differently: some count a Facebook page or a booking-tool listing, some require a registered domain. They sample differently, and a survey of a website builder's own customers will find a very high rate of website ownership for obvious reasons. And they draw the line around small business in different places, which matters enormously, because a 3-person landscaping crew and a 400-person manufacturer are both small businesses by SBA standards.
The practical read: treat any single percentage as an estimate with a wide error bar, and pay attention to the direction instead. Every source agrees the share is high and rising. None of them can tell you whether your competitors down the road have one, which is the question you actually care about.
What federal data actually shows about selling online
The Census Bureau does measure how much retail spending happens online, and it publishes the figure every quarter. In the first quarter of 2026, U.S. retail e-commerce sales were an estimated $326.7 billion, seasonally adjusted, which was 16.9% of the $1,929.0 billion in total retail sales for the quarter.
The growth gap is the more useful number. Over the same period, e-commerce sales rose 9.8% year over year while total retail sales rose 3.9%. Online is not merely growing alongside everything else; it is taking share, quarter after quarter.
That statistic understates the case for a small business, though, because it only counts transactions that complete online. It does not count the customer who searched for your hours, read three reviews and then drove over, or the one who compared two contractors' sites before calling one of them. For most local businesses the website's job is not to process the sale. It is to survive the comparison that happens before the sale.
Does having a website change what a small business earns?
Probably, but the statistics usually cited to prove it do not actually prove it. Claims like "businesses with websites earn 39% more" come from vendor surveys and are correlational. Larger, better-capitalised, better-run businesses are both more likely to have a website and more likely to earn more, so the website is partly a symptom of the thing being measured.
It is more honest, and more useful, to reason about what a website mechanically does. It makes you findable by someone who does not already know your name. It answers the questions that would otherwise be phone calls, which is why hours, service area and pricing structure belong above the fold. It takes bookings and payments outside your opening hours. And it is the only channel you own outright, unlike a social platform that can change its reach, its rules or its whole format without asking you.
If you want the adjacent numbers with real sources behind them, our breakdowns of small business social media statistics and AI adoption among small businesses cover where owners are actually spending their marketing attention.
What a small business website needs before it needs anything else
Five things, in this order: what you sell, where you serve, how to reach you, when you are open, and some proof you are real. A single page carrying those five clearly beats a ten-page redesign that has been stalled for eight months, and it beats it immediately rather than eventually.
After that, the details that quietly decide whether anyone sees it. Keep your name, address and phone identical to your Google Business Profile, because inconsistency there weakens local search. Make it load fast on a phone, since that is where most of the traffic is. Put real photographs of your own work on it rather than stock images. Our guide to building a simple business website covers the build itself, and how to advertise your small business covers what to do once it exists.
If the obstacle is cash rather than time, it is worth putting a website in proportion. It is a small fixed cost next to inventory, a vehicle or equipment, and unlike those it keeps working while you sleep. The Broker Shop is a funding broker, not a funder: one 2-minute application goes to the funders in our network of 50+ whose guidelines your business meets, so you can compare structures for a larger growth project side by side. It is free to apply, and checking your options won't affect your credit score.
Frequently Asked Questions
See what you qualify for
One 2-minute application is matched to the funders whose guidelines you meet. It's free, and checking your options won't affect your credit score.
See What I Qualify For →The bottom line: Nobody publishes an official count of small business websites, but the Census figures on where retail spending is heading make the direction clear enough to plan around.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau — Quarterly Retail E-Commerce Sales, 1st Quarter 2026 (released May 18, 2026)
Found these figures useful? You are welcome to cite or link to this page. Suggested attribution: “Small Business Website Statistics: How Many Have One?”, The Broker Shop — thebrokershopinc.com/small-business-website-statistics.html. Every figure links to its original primary source.