The provision and accessibility of small business Web sites: a survey of independent UK breweries

This paper surveys the population of independent breweries in the UK to ascertain their Web site usage and accessibility via the Internet. It finds independent breweries have tended to lag similarly sized business in other sectors in the provision or abandonment of company Web sites. Most of their Web sites have intuitively easy URLs and are readily accessible via brewery directories, but are less accessible via popular search engines. Most are corporate Web sites rather than marketing or selling tools. The paper concludes with a discussion of business and policy implications for small businesses and the Internet.