In a national survey, more than 30 percent of small business owners said they have opted to use a do-it-yourself package to create their organization's Web site.

Commissioned by 1&1 Internet, Inc. (1and1.com), the world's largest Web-hosting company, the study of 765 small business owners also found 100 percent of small business owners not only agreed that the absence of a company Web site would lead a potential customer to seek a competitor, but that using a poorly performing Web site could also lead to lost sales opportunities.

Sub-standard Web sites also impact a company's bottom line.  When asked whether or not potential customers would have more doubts about buying from a company using a poor quality Web site, survey respondents unanimously agreed that they would.

"Hundreds of thousands of US small businesses utilize 1&1 website packages," said Andreas Gauger, Chairman, 1&1.  "Often, sites built with a powerful DIY-style WebsiteBuilder can be more attractive to customers than complex or dated HTML websites, that require far more work to create."           

About 1&1 Internet Inc.
1&1 Internet Inc. is a subsidiary of United Internet, a profitable public company with 6,000 employees and a market cap of $4 billion.  1&1 was established in 1992 and hosts more than seven million domain names, while 38,000 servers run on the company's state-of-the-art data centers. 1&1's global community is over 6.5 million customer contracts strong. The company's U.S. headquarters is located in Chesterbrook, PA.  For more information about 1&1, please visit the company's Web site at www.1and1.com or call 1-877-461-2631.