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+ RESEARCH · UPDATED NOVEMBER 2026

Australian small business website statistics

The numbers on how Australians find, judge and buy from small businesses online. Every stat links to its source, and we update the page when new research comes out.

56%of small businesses have a website
9.8mhouseholds shop online
58%of Australians use AI tools
92%go online on mobile daily

+ THE SIZE OF THE MARKET

Small businesses in Australia

2.66 million
small businesses in Australia (0 to 19 employees)
Source 1
97.3%
of all Australian businesses are small businesses
Source 1
64%
of small businesses are sole traders or have no employees
Source 1

+ HOW SMALL BUSINESSES USE THE INTERNET

Small businesses online

56%
of small businesses have a dedicated website, up from 49% in 2025
Source 2
44%
of small businesses still don’t have a dedicated website
Source 2
85%
of small businesses would struggle to operate without the internet
Source 2
72%
of small businesses use AI for at least one purpose, up from 64% in 2025
Source 2
55%
of small businesses are quite or very concerned about online security
Source 2
$500
median yearly cyber security spend for a small business, up from $300 in 2025
Source 2

+ WHERE YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE

How Australians go online

99.7%
of Australian adults had internet access in 2025
Source 3
92%
of Australian adults use the internet on a mobile phone every day
Source 3
97%
of adults went online using a mobile device in 2025, the most common way to get online
Source 3
83%
of Australians can’t imagine life without the internet
Source 2

+ WHAT AUSTRALIANS SPEND ONLINE

Online shopping

$82.6 billion
spent online by Australians in 2025, a record
Source 4
24%
of all retail spending in Australia now happens online
Source 4
9.8 million
Australian households shopped online in 2025, 82% of all homes
Source 4
13.9%
growth in online spending on the year before
Source 4
$20 billion
spent online by Victorians in 2025
Source 4
$96
average online basket size, a five-year low
Source 4

+ HOW PEOPLE ARE FINDING BUSINESSES NOW

AI and search

58%
of Australians aged 14+ used AI tools in an average four weeks (13.6 million people)
Source 5
45%
of Australians aged 14+ used ChatGPT in an average four weeks (10.5 million people)
Source 5
74%
of Australians aged 25 to 34 used AI tools in an average four weeks
Source 5
45%
of consumers now use ChatGPT or other AI tools for local business recommendations, up from 6% a year earlier (US survey)
Source 6

+ WHAT PEOPLE CHECK BEFORE THEY CONTACT YOU

Reviews and trust

97%
of consumers read online reviews for local businesses (US survey)
Source 6
47%
won’t use a business with fewer than 20 reviews (US survey)
Source 6
74%
only care about reviews written in the last three months (US survey)
Source 6
89%
expect business owners to respond to reviews (US survey)
Source 6

+ WHY A FAST SITE PAYS FOR ITSELF

Website speed

8.4%
more retail conversions from a site that loads just 0.1 seconds faster on mobile
Source 7
10.1%
more travel conversions from the same 0.1 second improvement
Source 7
21.6%
more lead generation visitors reached the enquiry form after a 0.1 second improvement
Source 7

+ OUR OWN NUMBERS

From Sault Digital

20,535
uses of our free website tools, from speed and SEO checks to cost estimates
Source 8
120+
websites launched by our team since 2018
Source 8

+ WHAT IT MEANS

What this means for your business

Almost half of small businesses still have no website.

If your competitors are in that 44%, a good website is an easy edge. If they’re not, you can’t afford to be.

Web design →

Your customers are on their phones.

With 92% of adults online on mobile every day, your site has to work properly on a phone first.

Check your site on mobile →

AI is becoming a search engine.

More people now ask ChatGPT for recommendations, so your site needs clear, crawlable information about what you do and where.

Get found in AI search →

Reviews decide who gets the call.

Recent reviews, and your replies to them, matter as much as your ranking.

Get more Google reviews →

+ FREE TO USE

Using these stats?

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CITATIONSault Digital, Australian Small Business Website Statistics 2026, saultdigital.com.au/website-statistics-australia LINK FOR YOUR WEBSITE<a href="https://saultdigital.com.au/website-statistics-australia">Australian small business website statistics</a> (Sault Digital)

Sources

  1. 1Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, Small Business Counts (Aug 2025), using ABS Counts of Australian Businesses, June 2025
  2. 2auDA, Digital Lives of Australians 2026 (2,080 consumers and 408 small businesses, surveyed Feb to Mar 2026)
  3. 3ACMA, Communications and media in Australia: How we use the internet (Feb 2026)
  4. 4Australia Post, eCommerce Industry Report 2026 (covering 2025)
  5. 5Roy Morgan Single Source, AI tools usage, Jan to Mar 2026 (14,646 Australians aged 14+)
  6. 6BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 (1,002 US consumers)
  7. 7Deloitte and 55 for Google, Milliseconds Make Millions (2020, 37 brands across Europe and the US)
  8. 8Sault Digital, usage of our free website tools and projects since 2018

Where a survey was run outside Australia we say so next to the stat. Spotted a newer figure? Let us know and we’ll update the page.

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