Among small online businesses, B2B ecommerce is becoming as common as email. A Jupiter Research study released today revealed that 79 percent of small ebusinesses regularly use the Internet to shop for business-related needs. Here’s what I take from those numbers.

Relationships count. When asked for three factors that influence their online purchases, 62% chose familiarity with vendor. 39% gave the opinions of friends and colleagues a major role. Only 21% said emails and coupons were influential. Makes sense to me. A coupon from an unknown does not impress yours truly. A sales-pitch email from an unknown is likely to be deleted. However, a coupon from a desired and trusted source might even get me to cough up my email address. The reverse is not true.

There is no substitute for the combination of exposure and trust, and exposure alone doesn’t do it.

Do you think this trend will grow? I do. Of the businesses who had bought or applied for financial services online, 23% were in business 2 years or less, 13% had 2-20 yrs in business, and only 4% had more than 20 years in business.

What was happening in Internet development 20 years ago? It was a different world. The first graphical browser wasn’t developed until 1992. Amazon made it’s first book sale in 1995, the same year Windows began to integrate TCP/IP. Only the tiniest percentage of purchases happened online. 20 years ago MBA graduates did not study ebusiness. Today it would be unthinkable to graduate with a business degree and not have some exposure to online marketing.

Right now, according to Jupiter Research, what are the most common online B2B ebusiness purchases? Travel services, office furniture and computer software and hardware are the most common. As more businesses embrace the Internet and gain the trust of customers, how could 79% who shop for needs like travel not increase to over 79% who also shop for a plethora of other products and services?

If you’ve been feeling jaded, tired of the same old discussions of how to make online marketing tick, perk up and smell the statistics. We live in exciting times.

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