Excellent question and great responses so far. I'll just add this: the bottom line is that in addition to opening their goods/services up to an entirely new and non-local market, e-commerce primarily impacts three areas that are on small business owner's minds constantly - 1) Scalability (it is easier to grow from selling X units to Y units online than it is in-store due to shipping, payment processing, inventory control/tracking etc) 2) Cost Reduction/Profit-Driving - selling online is typically going to be exponentially cheaper given the significant reduction or elimination of overhead costs such as rental/property, taxes and salaried employees 3) Overall Risk mitigation: small business owners, more so than other types of ventures, feel the burden of various macro and micro-economic shifts first. From public policy adjustments (e.g. raising of minimum wages or new municipal ordinances) to the cost of materials for production (e.g. bakers struggling with whether or not to pass along the rising costs of eggs and milk directly to their customers). Selling online mitigates a small business owners exposure to changes in the market that represent risk (similar to portfolio diversification when investing in the stock market). Ultimately the reason why these people aren't investing is likely do to access to resources or overall education of how to seamlessly integrate ecommerce with their daily operations - what used to seem like a barrier to getting started now can take only a matter of days/weeks to get online purchasing up and running with the popularization of easy-to-use tools like Wordpress, Paypal and other 3rd party systems.