Following vertical drill downs into the buying habits of pizzarias and pharmacies, the team at Buzzboard recently took a look at optometrists. The biggest takeaway: Chain optometrists have a healthy digital presence while independent stores fall behind.

This goes especially for key components of digital presence like online ordering, paid search and mobile. Independent businesses also underperformed with website “robustness,” discoverability and social presence. This is consistent with BIA/Kelsey SMB data.

“As BuzzBoard continues to analyze huge volumes of data, the pattern is pretty clear: most small independent business are not yet demonstrating a commitment to offering their consumers a mobile friendly experience,” Buzzboard board advisor Neal Polachek told me. “It’s really too bad since there are so many really good platforms out there that can make this happen pretty quickly.”

This is similar to the findings of Buzzboard’s pizzaria study, and reveals the need for smaller SMBs to catch up with digital tools (and the opportunities to help them do so). The rest of the findings can be seen in living color in the infographic is below.

As background for the data, BuzzBoard’s platform aggregates data on the digital presence of SMBs, so that local media sales reps can be better informed and equipped to sell them things (leading with the tools SMBs are missing). It can be a powerful sales companion.

But the data also unearth lots of aggregate trends and vertical specific findings that Buzzboard has been releasing to demonstrate the power of its platform. The byproduct is a kind of public service announcement with notable findings on SMB buying habits.

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Speaking of SMB buying habits, BIA/Kelsey will host a free webcast on 8/19: The Shift from Media to Marketing Services: A Preview of BIA/Kelsey’s Latest SMB Research