Small businesses that buy online services or software on an a la carte basis face a dizzying menu of choices. Alignable, a social networking platform for small business owners, tried to cut through the clutter with a survey of 6,000 business operators across North America. The result: an SMB Trust Index that ranks 25 popular services providers based on Net Promoter Scores (that’s balancing positive and negative opinions).
Some of the winners and losers:
- Website publishing tool WordPress was the highest-scoring SMB provider, ranking number 1 with a score of 73. Also in the top 3 are payments company Authorize.Net and email vendor MailChimp (which saw its score rise by 3 points).
- Facebook rankings have dropped, coming in at number 12 with a ranking of 24. According to Alignable CEO Eric Groves, Facebook appears to be heading in the wrong direction, as many SMBs feel abandoned by the company’s move away from customer engagement and toward becoming more of a media company. According to Groves, “in early 2015, Facebook would have shown up in the top 3.”
- Yelp was the lowest scoring company, and next to last on the list was Groupon, with scores of -66 and -55 respectively.
- The index reveals what SMB owners value most. As revealed by GoDaddy’s ranking above Squarespace and Web.com, SMBs are more concerned with strong customer support than simple usability.
