44% of UK businesses have no plans to invest in digital

Why do so many capable businesses stand still? Not the struggling ones — the good ones. Full order books, steady customers, a trade they know inside out. And a website, a diary and an inbox that run exactly the way they did in 2019.

I recently worked through The Inevitable Shift, a report commissioned by Glass Atlas and Commerce in association with PayPal. The fieldwork behind it is proper: YouGov surveyed 500 decision-makers at UK B2B organisations in July 2025, weighted to be representative of business size and region. Two numbers stopped me. 42% of businesses operate without any ecommerce tech stack. And 44% reported no digital investment plans within the next twelve months.

Not “waiting for the right quarter”. Not “reviewing options”. No plans. Because nearly half the market has decided — actively, or by default — that this can wait.

The gap is not evenly spread

The whole-market numbers hide the real story, which is sectoral. Firstly, the sectors standing stillest:

• Hospitality and leisure — 80% have no ecommerce stack, 61% weren’t planning any tech investment within twelve months, and just 14% plan to invest in AI or automation.
• Construction — 33% planning digital investment, 18% planning AI. And 71% of construction respondents described their own marketing as “non-digital” or “passive”.
• Legal — 40% planning digital investment, 20% planning AI.

Secondly, the sectors already moving:

• Retail — 50% planning digital investment, 29% AI. Half the market moving, half not.
• Finance and accounting — 80% digital, 49% AI.
• IT and telecoms — 91% digital, 52% AI.

Two different races

If you run a restaurant, a building firm or a legal practice, most of the field hasn’t left the blocks. You don’t need to outrun the fastest business in Britain — you need to be visibly better than the four other firms a customer compares you against. In these sectors, a modest, well-chosen investment shows up quickly. Because almost nobody else is making one.

If you’re in finance or accountancy, the framing flips. 80% of your peers are investing in digital and nearly half in AI. Standing still there isn’t holding position — it’s drifting backwards while the tide moves.

A caveat, because surveys deserve one

The report also found that businesses pairing AI investment with ERP and payments reported up to 43% stronger commercial performance, and that sectors investing more in ecommerce and payments reported 2–3 times higher marketing-driven customer acquisition efficiency. Encouraging — but these are self-reported figures. Surveys measure what people say, not what their accounts show. I’d treat them as a direction of travel, not a promise.

What I’d actually do

Firstly, find out where your sector sits in the lists above, because it changes the urgency. Secondly, resist the big-bang project. The businesses that get burned are the ones that buy a transformation; the ones that compound are the ones that fix one measurable thing, see it pay, and go again. Thirdly, start from evidence about your own business — not the market average.

That last step is the one we’ve built for. Our free audit reads your website the way a stranger does, scores it, and shows you the working. It takes about a minute, and it’s a better starting point than any market report. Including this one.

Overall: the data says most of your competitors are standing still. That’s not a reason to relax. It’s the cheapest head start you’ll ever be offered.