Our Digital Future: Tracking Change in the Welsh Economy
Mapping changes in the use of digital technologies by Welsh businesses, and their effects on innovation, resilience and the promotion of Welsh values.
Fig 1: Unitary Authorities ranked by the average performance of their SMEs against three key metrics: Digital Maturity, Innovation and ESG posture.
| Cardiff | |
|---|---|
| Digital Maturity | 4 |
| Innovation | 5 |
| ESG | 2 |
| Overall Rank | 1 |
| Swansea | |
|---|---|
| Digital Maturity | 2 |
| Innovation | 6 |
| ESG | 5 |
| Overall Rank | 2 |
| Ceredigion | |
|---|---|
| Digital Maturity | 1 |
| Innovation | 11 |
| ESG | 4 |
| Overall Rank | 3 |
| Wrexham | |
|---|---|
| Digital Maturity | 9 |
| Innovation | 12 |
| ESG | 1 |
| Overall Rank | 4 |
| Carmarthenshire | |
|---|---|
| Digital Maturity | 17 |
| Innovation | 2 |
| ESG | 6 |
| Overall Rank | 5 |
| Flintshire | |
|---|---|
| Digital Maturity | 10 |
| Innovation | 4 |
| ESG | 13 |
| Overall Rank | 6 |
| Powys | |
|---|---|
| Digital Maturity | 16 |
| Innovation | 1 |
| ESG | 10 |
| Overall Rank | 7 |
| Pembrokeshire | |
|---|---|
| Digital Maturity | 11 |
| Innovation | 14 |
| ESG | 3 |
| Overall Rank | 8 |
| Denbighshire | |
|---|---|
| Digital Maturity | 13 |
| Innovation | 10 |
| ESG | 8 |
| Overall Rank | 9 |
| Newport | |
|---|---|
| Digital Maturity | 6 |
| Innovation | 9 |
| ESG | 16 |
| Overall Rank | 10 |
| Conwy | |
|---|---|
| Digital Maturity | 12 |
| Innovation | 3 |
| ESG | 17 |
| Overall Rank | 11 |
| Vale of Glamorgan | |
|---|---|
| Digital Maturity | 3 |
| Innovation | 17 |
| ESG | 14 |
| Overall Rank | 12 |
| Bridgend | |
|---|---|
| Digital Maturity | 8 |
| Innovation | 8 |
| ESG | 19 |
| Overall Rank | 13 |
| Isle of Anglesey | |
|---|---|
| Digital Maturity | 5 |
| Innovation | 22 |
| ESG | 11 |
| Overall Rank | 14 |
| Neath Port Talbot | |
|---|---|
| Digital Maturity | 7 |
| Innovation | 21 |
| ESG | 12 |
| Overall Rank | 15 |
| Torfaen | |
|---|---|
| Digital Maturity | 22 |
| Innovation | 13 |
| ESG | 7 |
| Overall Rank | 16 |
| Rhondda Cynon Taf | |
|---|---|
| Digital Maturity | 20 |
| Innovation | 18 |
| ESG | 9 |
| Overall Rank | 17 |
| Caerphilly | |
|---|---|
| Digital Maturity | 14 |
| Innovation | 16 |
| ESG | 18 |
| Overall Rank | 18 |
| Merthyr Tydfil | |
|---|---|
| Digital Maturity | 19 |
| Innovation | 7 |
| ESG | 22 |
| Overall Rank | 19 |
| Gwynedd | |
|---|---|
| Digital Maturity | 15 |
| Innovation | 15 |
| ESG | 21 |
| Overall Rank | 20 |
| Monmouthshire | |
|---|---|
| Digital Maturity | 18 |
| Innovation | 19 |
| ESG | 15 |
| Overall Rank | 21 |
| Blaenau Gwent | |
|---|---|
| Digital Maturity | 21 |
| Innovation | 20 |
| ESG | 20 |
| Overall Rank | 22 |
Welsh Digital Maturity Survey 2023
This year’s study analyses the digital presence of almost 6,000 Welsh businesses.
It includes representatives from every corner of the nation, providing a fine-grained picture of digital technology used throughout the Welsh economy. Adopting an entirely new approach to measuring digital maturity in the Welsh SME economy, the Digital Maturity for Wales Survey 2023 takes a structured sample of Welsh businesses and tracks their online presence over the past seven years, rating them on five key metrics. This is the largest survey of its kind ever conducted in Wales, and the first to directly monitor the digital activity of Welsh businesses.
On this site, you can download the full report and access summaries, charts and visualisations containing all you need to know about the use of digital technology in the Welsh economy:
• What’s the concentration of innovative companies in my local authority?
• Which business sectors are the most digitally mature?
• How has the use of the Welsh language on websites spread since 2016?
Evaluate our survey data:
Digital Maturity across the Nation
The Digital Maturity score provides a robust comparison between businesses with respect to the sophistication and scope of their digital presence. This map shows the average digital maturity score of SMEs in all sectors for each unitary authority of Wales.
Ceredigion
Torfean
North Wales
Mid Wales
South West Wales
South East Wales
Highest Level:
Lowest Level:
Digital Maturity a National Picture
This graph shows the national average Digital Maturity score at the start of each year since 2016, allowing us to compare changes to each over time.
Nationally, Digital Maturity sees a notable increase between 2020-2021. It continues to increase more gradually between 2021-2023.
No Data Found
Digital Maturity, a Regional Comparison
This graph shows each region’s average digital maturity score at the start of each year since 2016, allowing us to compare changes to each over time.
Regionally, Mid Wales consistently scores the highest on average for Digital Maturity between 2016 and 2023, 1.14% higher than the next highest region, South West Wales, at the beginning of 2023.
No Data Found
Innovation across the Nation
The Innovation score provides a value for the capacity or potential of an organisation to innovate. This map shows the lowest and highest scoring unitary authorities of Wales based on the average innovation capacity for organisations in each unitary authority.
Powys
Isle of Anglesey
North Wales
Mid Wales
South West Wales
South East Wales
Highest Level:
Lowest Level:
Innovation across Welsh regions
This graph shows each region’s average innovation score at the start of each year since 2016, allowing us to compare changes to each over time.
Mid Wales consistently scores highest, leading with a significant 0.04 points above the next highest region, North Wales – equating to a 4% gap by the beginning of 2023.
No Data Found
The use of the Welsh Language across Business Websites
We counted how many languages we could find on the websites of the companies we monitored. We found that 13% of sites had two or more languages present. We also found that Welsh-language versions of sites were far more prevalent in North-West Wales than any other region.
Single Language:
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Multiple Languages:
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Welsh Language use Online
This survey of Welsh SME’s found that the distribution but not the overall level of Welsh language across the digital landscape closely mirrors the findings of 2019-2020 Welsh language use survey.
The relative proportion of Welsh speakers in a region closely matches the percentage of SME’s located in the region whose websites contain Welsh language text.
Welsh businesses do not currently, in the great majority of cases, use Welsh language on their digital properties.
Gwynedd
Cardiff
Blaenau Gwent & Torfaen
North Wales
Mid Wales
South West Wales
South East Wales
Highest Level:
Lowest Level:
Percentage of all Websites containing Welsh in each UA
While the small number of companies that do use Welsh online tend to be in areas which contain the highest proportion of Welsh speakers. One significant variation from this can be found in Cardiff. We found 20.14 % of websites owned by SME’s in Wales which contain some Welsh language are owned by companies located in Cardiff.
No Data Found
Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) across the Nation
Our ESG Orientation metric measured the extent to which our companies’ websites position themselves positively towards (i.e. proactively engaged with) Environmental, Social and Governance issues and benchmarked them against global trends in tackling them. This map shows the average ESG score of companies in each unitary authority in Wales.
Wrexham
Merthyr Tydfil
North Wales
Mid Wales
South West Wales
South East Wales
Lowest Level:
Highest Level:
ESG Regional Comparisons
This graph shows the historical trends in ESG scores for the regions of Wales.
South East Wales scores highest for ESG posture, 3.6% higher than the lowest scoring region of Mid Wales, while the South West and North are almost exactly midway between them, with the same score.
No Data Found
Digital Growth within Welsh Regions
The Digital Growth Index loosely represents the volume of changes made by companies to their digital properties every month. It can be interpreted as the monthly level of investment into those digital properties and is most useful for making month-on-month comparisons and observing sustained changes over time.
South East
Mid Wales
North Wales
Mid Wales
South West Wales
South East Wales
Lowest Level:
Highest Level:
Digital Growth Regional Comparisons
No Data Found