Australian businesses earned a record $246.4 billion from Internet sales in 2012-13 +from $237.1 billion in 2011-12 according to a new report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The Summary of IT Use and Innovation in Australian Business 2012-13 report reveals almost one in two Australian businesses or 47.2 percent had a Web presence that year.
Between 2010-11 and 2011-12 it says most key indicators of business use of information technology have reased. The greatest change was in the proportion of businesses that placed orders via the Internet. This reased four percentage points to 55 percent between 2010-11 and 2011-12.
The value of ome derived from the sale of goods or services via the Internet has reased by 25 percent from $189 billion in 2010-11 to $237 billion in 2011-12.
The proportion of businesses receiving orders via the Internet rose to 30.2 percent +from 27.8 percent in 2011-12. However the proportion of Australian businesses placing orders online slipped to 53.4 percent from 55.3 percent in 2011-12.
“For example survey results show that nearly a third of Australian businesses received orders via the Internet during 2012-13. These orders were worth close to $250 billion which is an rease of almost $10 billion from the year before” said Sue-Ellen Luke from the ABS.
Also luded in the release is information about how Australian businesses are innovating: overall in 2012-13 42 percent of businesses undertook innovative activity.
“In line with previous results large businesses are more than twice as likely to have undertaken some form of innovation – such as introducing new or improved goods or services or improving operational processes – than small businesses” said Luke.
Paul Resnik from FinaMetrica said the ABS data reveals that bigger businesses are more likely to conduct e-commerce activities have a Web presence and be on social media.
“Whereas almost 100 percent of all big businesses or those with 200 or more employees had a Web presence 60.3 percent of those with 5 to 19 employees were online in 2012-13 and 35.9 percent of businesses with nil to four employees. With a Web site costing as little as $1 a month to build and host there is no excuse for any business not being online today” said Resnik.
