SMB Cloud Software on the Rebound

In the market for online tools and services aimed at small to midsize businesses, negative trends are easing and positive ones are emerging, particularly in the human capital management (HCM) and recruiting segment. This may say something about the strength of small businesses and their willingness to spend on tools to make themselves more productive. Or it could be more a reflection of favorable comparisons with slow periods last year.

Key takeaways

• In the heatmaps analysis created by Similarweb’s Investor Intelligence team, most parts of the SMB SaaS tools market show as green or rising, even if they have farther to go before they will start growing in absolute terms.
• SMB HCM tools for recruiting and hiring show up as one of the strongest positive trends, doing 7% better in the most recent 4 weeks versus the trailing twelve weeks our analysis uses to identify trends.
• Shopify, an important player in ecommerce for SMBs, is doing significantly better at attracting website visitors and potential customers than it was at this time last year. Visits were up 5.4% in August and look to be running about 7% higher in September.

Mapping the trends

Every two weeks, the Similarweb team produces a series of global and regional web traffic heatmap reports – snapshots of the digital economy’s gains and losses – with breakdowns by market sector.  Here’s the current heatmap for Global Small Market Business Tools.

How to read this: Each 2-week snapshot of industry traffic is color-coded green or red for year-over-year increases and decreases. Rising and falling trends are determined by comparing data from the most recent four weeks with the most recent 12 weeks.

While there is still a lot of red on the map, negative trends are easing in almost every category.

In the US., the trends are a little more positive, with more green showing.

SMB HCM / human resources software stands out

Human capital management (HCM) and recruitment – tools for hiring, retaining, and managing employees – stand out as a strong category.  For the most recent two weeks, traffic was up year over year 15% globally and 16% in the U.S.

Globally, SMB HCM shows up as one of the strongest positive trends, doing 7% better in the most recent 4 weeks versus the trailing twelve.

Shopify recovering from a dip in interest

As an important player in ecommerce for SMBs, Shopify has a significant impact on this index and is currently bouncing back after several months when traffic was down. In August, Shopify traffic was up 5.4% – a big improvement from the dips of 20% or more it was seeing at this time last year.

The positive trend appears to be holding up in September, with traffic for the first 20 days of the month up about 7% compared with the same period in 2021.

These are just a few highlights from the full Similarweb Heatmaps report, available as a free download.

The Similarweb Insights & Communications team is available to pull additional or updated data on request for the news media (journalists are invited to write to press@similarweb.com). When citing our data, please reference Similarweb as the source and link back to the most relevant blog post or similarweb.com/blog/insights/.

Methodology

Disclaimer: All data, reports and other materials provided or made available by Similarweb are based on data obtained from third parties, including estimations and extrapolations based on such data. Similarweb shall not be responsible for the accuracy of the materials and shall have no liability for any decision by any third party based in whole or in part on the materials.

Image by naobim from Pixabay

by David F. Carr

David covers social media, digital advertising, and generative AI. With a background in web trends since the 1990s, he’s also the author of "Social Collaboration for Dummies".