When it comes to the brand names that small businesses trust the most, Amazon, Stripe and Google top the list.
Third quarter 2017 confidence index
This is the conclusion of the quarterly SMB Trust Index (PDF) report of Alignable. The company surveyed 42,000 small businesses to gauge their level of trust in other brands that help small businesses.
If you are a small business owner, you probably know very well the top three companies. But the report includes a top 20 in different industries so you can evaluate the brands that small business owners find trustworthy.
This type of survey gives small business owners a reliable source to identify brands they can trust to run their businesses. Because small businesses can hardly afford to try new brands and the cost associated with repairs, low service level agreements, upgrades, security and more, strong brands are sought
On the official Alignable blog, Jonathan Moreland addressed the importance of this survey and the double explanation provided by the data. He said, "First of all, when you make important purchasing decisions, you can quickly see what brands other small business owners rely on and why." Second, you can find peace of mind knowing that these ratings have been shared by a network of trusted small business owners. "
The process
Alignable uses the Net Promoter Score (NPS) methodology to create the confidence index by asking how much respondents are likely to recommend a brand to another business owner on a scale of 1 to 10.
The best brands
Amazon came in first for the fifth consecutive time, with small business owners touting the company's pricing, speed, and reliability. These are all the qualities on which a small business depends, which means that Amazon will probably remain an eternal favorite.
The first five remaining deliver also when it comes to reliability. Stripe was second, selected for its strong payment processing solution capable of handling the digital and physical transactions without glitches, the survey says.
Google, Apple and Authorize.Net arrive in third, fourth and fifth positions respectively. Again, these brands bring together digital and physical services to reliably solve the real problems that small business owners face every day.
The top 20 remaining brands include: FedEx, WordPress, PayPal, UPS, LinkedIn, Vistaprint, MailChimp, 1 and 1, Square, Microsoft, Twitter, Dropbox, Intuit, Facebook and OpenTable.
More than 100 brands were included in the index in 13 categories of industries.
Trusting other small businesses
Mr. Moreland said: "While it may be helpful to speak with business representatives or read third-party review sites, the most valuable information comes from a network. from trusted business owners. " This is especially true for the same industry companies as you. If you know what works, you will not have to go through an expensive period of trial and error to find it.
You can look at the rest of the index data in the infographic below.
Logo Amazon Logo via Shutterstock