How Small Business Websites Shape Growth in 2025

Small and medium-sized businesses continue to see websites as central to growth in 2025. Among companies that have a website, 63% said it plays a very or extremely important role. The figure drops to 58% for sole proprietors and 52% for businesses with two to 10 employees, but climbs to 78% for firms with 11 to 100 employees. Only 1% of respondents said a website has no importance to their business.

Websites are not just a showcase, as per Wordstream report. Around 70% of SMBs allow customers to buy directly online. That share rises to 85% for larger firms and falls to 66% for solo operators. Mid-sized businesses tend to sell less online, reflecting the prevalence of service-based operations such as home services, which make up 22% of respondents.

Lead generation is another key function. Nearly seven in ten businesses said their website is a significant source of leads. Larger businesses report the highest reliance at 84%, while those with two to 10 employees are at 56%. Tracking conversions may be easier for bigger firms, which could explain the difference.

Despite the benefits, 62% of SMBs said their model could function without a website (surprise, surprise). Mid-sized companies were most confident in this, while roughly half of sole proprietors felt their business would struggle without one.

Driving traffic and converting visitors was the top challenge, cited by 35% of businesses. Other hurdles included keeping content current, design and technical limitations, limited staff or time, and unclear strategy. Social media was the most common source of traffic at 64%, followed by organic search (52%) and referrals (51%). AI sources ranked lowest, though 18% of firms monitor traffic from AI.

The findings suggest that websites remain a key component for sales and leads. At the same time, small businesses face ongoing pressure to maintain visibility and optimize conversions.

Notes: This post was drafted with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed, edited, and published by humans. 

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Nearly Six in Ten Young Americans View AI as Employment Risk, Harvard Survey Reveals

A majority of young Americans view artificial intelligence (AI) as a threat to their future employment, with 59% seeing it as a risk to their job prospects, according to a new Harvard Youth Poll of 2,040 people aged 18 to 29.

The concern about AI surpasses traditional anxieties about job loss. Just 48% identified outsourcing to other countries as a threat, while only 31% expressed worry about immigration affecting their employment opportunities.

The pessimism extends beyond job security. Nearly half of respondents, 44%, believe AI will eliminate opportunities rather than create them. Only 14% expect the technology to generate new possibilities. Another 17% anticipate no change, while 23% remain uncertain.

Democrats showed sharper skepticism than Republicans, with 52% of young Democrats expecting fewer opportunities compared to 37% of Republicans. Both parties largely agreed on employment threats, with 66% of Democrats and 59% of Republicans viewing AI as a threat to job prospects.

Young people also question whether AI will make their work lives better. Forty-one percent said the technology would make work less meaningful, while just 14% predicted it would add meaning. Nineteen percent saw no difference coming, and 25% were unsure.

Despite these concerns, many young Americans are adopting AI tools. More than half, 52%, trust AI to help complete school or work assignments. College students showed even higher confidence at 63%. However, trust dropped significantly for personal matters, with only 25% trusting AI for medical advice and 18% for mental health support.

The poll was conducted November 3-7 with a margin of error of 2.94%.

Notes: This post was drafted with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed, edited, and published by humans.

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Meta Oversight Board Marks Five Years, Will Review Account Decisions in 2026

Meta's Oversight Board published a report December 4, 2025 marking five years since it selected its first cases in October 2020. The board has issued more than 300 recommendations during that period, and Meta has implemented 75 percent of them.

The board stated its scope will expand in 2026 to pilot reviewing Meta's decisions that remove or impact user accounts. The report described this as something that has created ongoing frustration for platform users.

The report included data showing how specific recommendations changed Meta's platforms. After a 2022 board decision on Iranian protest content, Instagram posts containing the phrase marg bar Khamenei increased 29 percent when measured across the same pages, groups and accounts. Meta also began informing users in 2024 which specific policy their content allegedly violated when enforcement action is taken.

Meta introduced educational violation notices in early 2025 for users committing their first violation of what Meta considers non-severe. Between January and March, more than 7.1 million Facebook users and 730,000 Instagram users received these notices. Nearly 3 million users started the educational exercise, with more than 80 percent on Facebook and more than 85 percent on Instagram completing it to avoid account strikes.

• Also read: AI-Generated Videos for Babies Flood YouTube, Experts Warn

During a 29-day period in October 2024, users viewed more than 360 million pieces of content with AI labels on Facebook and 330 million on Instagram.

The board operates through an irrevocable trust funding operations through 2027 and has 21 members. The report stated the board has had frustrations and never gets as much access or influence as it would like from Meta.

Notes: This post was drafted with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed, edited, and published by humans. Image: Oversightboard / YT

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by Irfan Ahmad via Digital Information World

Marketers Are Drowning In Data But Are Starved For Insights

Modern marketing teams swim in oceans of data and numbers, from social media analytics to advertising platform metrics, customer journey tracking to conversion monitoring. And yet, a startling new report reveals most marketers, even today, still have no clear idea what’s actually working and what isn’t.

Research from marketing intelligence platform Funnel and insights firm Ravn Research, based on surveys of 238 marketing professionals, strikes at the heart of this issue. 86% of in-house marketers and 79% of agency marketers struggle to determine the impact of each marketing channel on overall performance, whilst, perhaps even more concerning, 72% of in-house marketers report actually having mountains of data which they can't turn into actionable insights.

In the words of Alanis Morissette; isn’t it ironic, don’t you think? Years of technological advances and adoption - in which we have seen marketers overrely on cookies and last-click attribution, for example, to discern the impact of their campaigns - and still seeing the forest from the trees is proving rather difficult.

Modern marketing’s complexity may just be to blame. Customer journeys, far from being simple, now travel through dozens and dozens of potential touchpoints across multiple devices and platforms. A single conversion - supposedly simple - may involve the customer seeing a social media ad, clicking on a search result days later, and then visiting the website multiple times, and finally making the purchase after receiving an email. Tracking and understanding these byzantine, fragmented paths is difficult for most teams.

Clicks, impressions, and followers are all examples of the misplaced vanity metrics that are now out of date. Yes, numbers like these are easy to track and report, but do they tell you anything about business impact? Not really. Funnel’s report found that 76% of respondents claim they connect their efforts to business goals, but are hamstrung by their ability to communicate this very effectively to finance departments (13%).

Thijs Bongertman, chief data officer at agency SPAIK, notes in the report that “a lot of companies have a reporting culture instead of an actionable insight culture. And what's often missing is business acumen, understanding the nitty-gritty about what actually drives the business.”

A potential salve to these problems of tracking and miscommunication could well be AI tools, the much-championed technology of our age that promises to cut through complexity and surface-level insights automatically. The reality of implementing AI is more muddled than one might think.

ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini have all come to the fore, often transplanting users’ traditional methods of search: about two-thirds of marketers (64%) foresee customers using traditional search engines less frequently in the next few years, their heads turning towards AI. Shifting from traditional search engine optimization (SEO) to “generative engine optimization” (GEO) is symptomatic of this change in people’s habits for finding information online.

Knowing this, only around half of in-house marketers (52%) are creating content optimized for these AI platforms and - potentially worse - just 44% are training their teams on AI-driven search and visibility practices. An even smaller 30% are automating content optimization tasks, low-lift work that should be freeing marketers up for strategic input.

The double-edged sword that is AI shows the rock-and-hard-place marketers are faced with, requiring them to navigate both time-saving and creative output (which must avoid being classed as “AI slop”). While 54% of survey participants say AI enhances creativity on their teams, 39% of agency marketers and 23% of brand marketers find that AI tools generate repetitive, generic campaigns.

A key standard for marketing teams must therefore be the ability to adapt and experiment with new techniques for producing creativity and measuring the efficacy of campaigns (something which many survey respondents found to be lacking). 56% of in-house marketers and 43% of agency staff aren't consistently empowered to try their hand at new marketing approaches. Raising concerns and challenging existing strategies is a further quandary, whereby 41% of in-house teams aren’t fully comfortable, and Gen Z-ers are four times less likely to make a fuss and pivot from existing methods than their oldest colleagues.

This allows consequences to play out in cautious, risk-averse behaviors which get marketers stuck in a rut. 64% of in-house and 53% of agency respondents haven't launched a campaign in over three months that meaningfully deviates from their usual practices. Amidst bewildering technological change, playing it safe has somehow seeped into teams and become a dominant strategy. “People are afraid to change old habits for fear it will be unsuccessful,” one marketer highlights, “[as it] would put a target on their back.”

Tom Roach, VP of Brand Strategy at Jellyfish, argues that this represents a major misunderstanding of risk. “Playing it safe is actually the riskiest long-term strategy, as it leads to stagnation. Brands can make bolder moves by adopting a test-and-learn mindset and ring-fencing a small innovation budget.”

Underwriting all of this is a gaping hole in analytical capabilities where only 8% of in-house and 21% of agency teams consistently use advanced analytics methods like marketing mix modeling (MMM), attribution modeling, and incrementality testing to understand effectiveness. Why is this critical? Because robust measurement determines marketers' understanding of the impact of their actions, whether implementing strategies new or old.

Among those that do use advanced analytics consistently, a high proportion (76%) feel empowered to experiment with new marketing approaches, a figure that sinks to 36% among those with limited or no advanced analytics capabilities.

Most marketers, in fact, lack some of the basic skills in these areas. 27% rate themselves as “advanced” in attribution modeling, just 18% advanced in incrementality testing, and a meager 15% consider themselves advanced in MMM.

Tom Roach points out: “Data analysts are very good at reporting on what happened. But to interrogate why something happened requires additional skills, including a broader understanding of how communications work, how campaigns are supposed to work, how brand growth works, and the myriad ways things can go wrong. That’s less about data analysis and more about detective work.”

In charting a path forward, marketers are now compelled to address multiple challenges at the same time. Leadership teams need to put money behind a clean, unified data infrastructure at a foundational level. These same leaders must instate structured opportunities to allow their teams to gain analytical skills; specifically, 70% of marketers want to improve their MMM capabilities. Experiment with new strategies and technologies - within reason - must be rewarded, not punished.

Simply documenting what happened with your data is no longer enough: marketers need to understand why it happened and what to do differently next time. The tools and technology exist to solve these problems, but what's missing is businesses’ commitment to using them properly.

Until that changes, marketers will continue swimming in data while thirsting for insight, surrounded by powerful tools they’re unable to fully leverage, playing it safe in a marketing environment that demands boldness, not blandness.

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by Irfan Ahmad via Digital Information World

Google Pilots Android In-Call Scam Protection for US Financial Apps

Google began rolling out an Android in-call scam protection pilot in the United States in December 2025, working with financial institutions including JPMorganChase and fintechs like Cash App.

The feature addresses social engineering scams where criminals impersonate banks or trusted institutions by phone, tricking victims into sharing their screen to reveal banking information or make a financial transfer.

When users open a participating financial app while screen sharing during a call with an unsaved contact, their Android 11 or newer device displays a warning message. A 30-second pause prevents immediate action. One button ends the call and stops screen sharing.

The alert warns that callers may pose as someone else and advises against following instructions or sharing personal information.

Google tested this protection in the United Kingdom earlier in 2025. The company stated the UK pilot helped thousands of users end calls that could have resulted in significant financial losses. Google has now expanded the protection to most major UK banks and recently launched pilots in Brazil and India. Participating apps include traditional banking apps and peer-to-peer payment apps.

A YouGov survey commissioned by Google polled daily smartphone users who had been exposed to scam or fraud attempts. Among respondents who use the default texting app, Android users were 58 percent more likely than iOS users to report receiving no scam texts in the prior week.

Google stated it plans to bring these protections to more users.

Notes: This post was drafted with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed, edited, and published by humans.

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Location Data From Apps and Carriers Enables Tracking Without Warrants

If you use a mobile phone with location services turned on, it is likely that data about where you live and work, where you shop for groceries, where you go to church and see your doctor, and where you traveled to over the holidays is up for sale. And U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is one of the customers.

Image: DIW-Aigen

The U.S. government doesn’t need to collect data about people’s locations itself, because your mobile phone is already doing it. While location data is sometimes collected as part of a mobile phone app’s intended use, like for navigation or to get a weather forecast, more often locations are collected invisibly in the background.

I am a privacy researcher who studies how people understand and make decisions about data that is collected about them, and I research new ways to help consumers get back some control over their privacy. Unfortunately, once you give an app or webpage permission to collect location data, you no longer have control over how the data is used and shared, including who the data is shared with or sold to.

Why mobile phones collect location data

Mobile phones collect location data for two reasons: as a by-product of their normal operation, and because they are required to by law.

Mobile phones are constantly scanning for nearby cell towers so that when someone wants to place a call or send a text, their phone is already connected to the closest tower. This makes it faster to place a call or send a text.

To maintain quality of service, mobile phones often connect with multiple cell towers at the same time. The range of the radio signal from a cell tower can be thought of as a big bubble with the cell tower in the center. The location of a mobile phone can be calculated via triangulation based on the intersection of the bubbles surrounding each of the cell towers the phone is connected to.

In addition to cell tower triangulation, since 2001 mobile phone carriers have been required by law to provide latitude and longitude information for phones that have been used to call 911. This supports faster response times from emergency responders.

The ‘Today’ show gives an overview of how your phone reveals where you go and what you do.

How location data ends up being shared

When people allow webpages and apps to access location data generated by their mobile phones, the software maker can share that data widely without asking for further permission. Sometimes the apps themselves do this directly through partnerships between the maker and data brokers.

More often, apps and webpages that contain advertisements share location data via a process called “real-time bidding,” which determines which ads are shown. This process involves third parties hired by advertisers, which place automated bids on the ad space to ensure that ads are shown to people who match the profile of interests the advertisers are looking for.

• Also read: 3 Out of 4 Americans Willingly Trade Personal Data For Discounts Despite Privacy Fears

To identify the target audience for the ads, software embedded in the app or webpage shares information collected about the user, including their location, with the third parties placing the bids. These third parties are middlemen that can keep the data and do whatever they want with it, including selling the data to location data brokers, whether or not their bid wins the auction for the ad space.

What happens to the data once it is shared

The data acquired by location data brokers is sold widely, including to companies called location-based service providers that repackage it and sell access to tools that monitor people’s locations. Some of these tools do things like provide roadside assistance. Others are used by police, government agencies and others to track down individuals.

In October 2025, news outlets reported that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had purchased a location surveillance tool from a company called Penlink that can track movements of specific mobile devices over time in a given location. Tools like this allow users to access location data from “hundreds of millions of mobile phones” without a warrant.

Why it matters

The invisible collection, sale and repackaging of location data is a problem because location data is extremely sensitive and cannot be made anonymous. The two most common locations a person visits are their home and where they work. From this information alone, it is trivially easy to determine a person’s identity and match it with the other location data about them that these companies have acquired.

Also, most people don’t realize that the location data they allowed apps and services to collect for one purpose, like navigation or weather, can reveal sensitive personal information about them that they may not want to be sold to a location data broker. For example, a research study I published about fitness tracker data found that even though people use location data to track their route while exercising, they didn’t think about how that data could be used to infer their home address.

This lack of awareness means that people can’t be expected to anticipate that data collected through the normal use of their mobile phones might be available to, for example, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

More restrictions on how mobile phone carriers and apps are allowed to collect and share location data – and on how the government is allowed to obtain and use location information about people – could help protect your privacy. To date, Federal Trade Commission efforts to curb carriers’ data sales have had mixed results in federal court, and only a few states are attempting to pass legislation to tackle the problem.

Emilee Rader, Professor of Information, University of Wisconsin-Madison

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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by Web Desk via Digital Information World

How Small Businesses Will Stand Out in 2026 with Bold Marketing

As a small business owner, keeping up with the latest marketing trends can seem like an impossible feat – especially when competing with larger brands that have the budgets to create polished, wide-reaching marketing campaigns. But in 2026, it’s less about shine and more about reaching and connecting with those who make your business tick in an authentic way. Today, consumers are scrolling past perfection in search of brands who aren’t afraid to show off their personality, a trait that is intrinsic to all small businesses.

VistaPrint’s recently released 2026 marketing trends report details how entrepreneurs can capture that attention by embracing imperfection and authenticity to drive impact. From cheeky stunts to self-aware humor, next year’s most talked-about trends share one goal: breaking the routine of the marketing we’re accustomed to.

Show Your Depth

Gone are the days when superficial, short-form content satisfies consumers. After years of being inundated with seconds-long videos, they’re craving something substantial. Stories they can get lost in, told by real humans that they can relate to and connect with. This shift is evidenced by the rise in popularity of podcasts, YouTube videos and Substacks. Consumers are resonating with brands and creators who can hold their attention for a prolonged period of time, whether that be while they commute, exercise, cook or take time for themselves.

This marks one of the biggest digital marketing trends in 2026: long-form influencer marketing. Smaller businesses can find success by partnering with niche, industry-specific creators for deeper, authentic storytelling that goes beyond one-off posts and reaches consumers in a space where they are most engaged.

These longer formats allow small businesses to speak directly to consumers in a way that feels honest and intimate – reaching them in their ear buds, inboxes and/or screen of choice without feeling like a typical ad. These tactics have the potential to build lasting loyalty and drive awareness by aligning brand with trustworthy creators and peeling back the curtain to humanize your story. .

Image: DIW-Aigen

There are endless opportunities to deploy this longer-form storytelling, from sponsoring a niche newsletter to reach target customers, to partnering with YouTube personalities with a cult following on a product tutorial or review, or collaborating with an on-brand podcast to appear as a guest or feature a product in an episode. And if you want to branch out on your own, there is always the option to create your own channel to showcase your passion, expertise and customer stories through platforms with very low barriers to entry. Entrepreneurs can get creative and have fun experimenting with different storytelling formats.

• Also read: New Data Shows Sharp Turn in Consumer Attitudes Toward AI in the Creator Economy

Get Cheeky

Speaking of creativity, the next trend is all about thinking outside the box and grabbing customer attention via shock factor. Mischief Marketing centers on creating shareable, memorable experiences that spark conversations online and offline. From cheeky, real-world stunts to unexpected activations, small businesses can catch customers by surprise and generate buzz that cuts through the clutter of shiny, overdone campaigns.

Consider physical marketing to make this approach work. Think noticeable props in high foot-traffic areas that create a fun and memorable photo opportunity for customers. For example, a bakery creating a hilariously oversized croissant to display outside their storefront.

You can also find ways to make it interactive with hidden elements that require scanning, scratching or peeling to reveal something special. Engaging customers in ways they least expect it is key to the success of this trend, making it more impactful and more affordable than a big ad buy.

Make sure to encourage customer reactions so they can be shared across your social media platforms.

Mischief Marketing tactics like these allow small businesses to make an impression on customers without a flashy budget and to show your brand’s personality in a way that’s playful, tactile and shareable.

Embrace Your Imperfections

Where Mischief Marketing succeeds by creating unexpected moments to grab attention, another trend to look for is small businesses embracing their imperfections by spotlighting them in their marketing campaigns to humanize themselves and join customers in poking fun.

Radical Self-Awareness is about disarming skepticism through raw humor. Brands that aren’t afraid to be self-deprecating present as honest and relatable, a refreshing change from stuffy, overly produced marketing. This trend builds customer trust by demonstrating confidence in your brand and that you’re paying attention to their feedback.

A good example is a popular beverage company turning negative online comments into albums of various genres available on Spotify and as vinyls. While some brands may have ignored the criticism, they turned it into a viral moment that bolstered their visibility and resonance among customers.

Other ideas to leverage the Radical Self-Awareness trend include turning industry tropes into content to help your brand stand out, sharing behind-the-scenes bloopers or projects that didn’t go as planned to show imperfections, and getting creative in the comments by engaging in clever conversation to help shape brand voice.

Experimentation is at the heart of Radical Self-Awareness. Try different approaches to see what sticks and show customers you don’t take yourself too seriously.

Be Silly, Act Quickly

While Radical Self-Awareness requires an element of planning, the next trend requires moving fast to capitalize on fleeting, out-of-the box ideas. Reactive Absurdism is similar to Mischief Marketing by creating unexpected moments, but in this instance, they’re happening on TikTok and Instagram and are usually the product of an impulse decision.

Most small businesses know this well: sometimes the best ideas come out of nowhere. Instead of trying to build a marketing or brand awareness concept into a fully baked, manufactured campaign, this trend finds strength in the ‘just go for it’ mentality. Reactive Absurdism thrives on the quick pace of social media and taps into consumers’ hunger for content that breaks the monotony of their feed. This requires being nimble and quick-witted – two things small business owners excel at.

Think tongue-in-cheek limited edition products, such as a popular cookie brand dropping a Thanksgiving Dinner flavor, quickly sharing an unusual yet compelling take on a current trend, or even in-person stunts like making outrageous claims about various objects in your shop and sharing customer reactions online.

There is no rhyme or reason behind Reactive Absurdism tactics, and that’s what makes it work. The absurdity sparks curiosity among customers and leaves a lasting impression without requiring big budgets or months of planning. Best of all, it allows small businesses to let their creativity shine.

Use AI to Scale Creativity

Most small business owners are already using AI to automate and optimize processes, and while it remains a controversial topic, there is no denying the opportunities it presents to augment creative efforts. Accessible AI tools are helping small businesses personalize campaigns, generate content, and engage customers more effectively without huge budgets.

In this trend, small businesses are using AI as a creative partner to create unique experiences for customers at scale that may not have been possible otherwise. For example, integrate AI into your website to allow customers to design custom products, share AI-generated poems that weave in brand personality and values as an add-on to purchases, or allow visiting customers to create keepsakes as part of an in-store activation.

Using AI for creative purposes presents new ways for customers to interact with small businesses and build stronger connections. However, it’s important to be transparent about the use of AI to further deepen trust and protect your brand’s credibility.

Looking Ahead

These trends exemplify that breaking from the norm and thinking outside of the box will pay off in 2026. Experiment boldly with the different creative strategies presented by each trend to see what works for your brand and resonates most with customers. The main takeaway is that you don’t need a massive budget or a full marketing team to make an impact in the year ahead – stay true to your brand’s personality, take risks and have fun.

Erin Shea is the Senior Director of North America Marketing at VistaPrint, the print and design partner to millions of small businesses. VistaPrint helps small business owners bring their ideas to life through custom print products, easy-to-use digital tools and expert design support.

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