The survey of nearly 500 top UK businesses was conducted on
behalf of the software company in February this year, to establish
how the internet is being used in business, and what difficulties
it is presenting.
According to Macromedia, use of the internet is standard, with
92% of respondents having a web site, and 28% also having an
intranet. Most of these (53%) were built in-house, 30% were built
externally, and 11% were a collaborative effort.
The use of a corporate web site is, in the main, for information
and advertising, with only 11% actually use their site for selling
products.
According to Macromedia, the majority of companies, having spent
a substantial amount of money either outsourcing or requisitioning
their own IT departments' time to develop a site, have no idea
whether that budget was spent wisely, wasted or somewhere in
between.
"The measurable amount of ROI is very subjective," said Fiona
Coughlan, Managing Director for Macromedia Northern Europe.
"The most surprising thing about this research is that it shows
that most are prepared to invest in a strategic internet strategy
without having the means to measure the return for the investment,"
she added.
Content management was voted the biggest headache for companies.
Forty-nine percent of respondents said that the problem lies in
keeping the content up-to-date and retaining consistency across the
site.
The research also tackled the issue of workflow within web
development and management teams. Generally, results showed that
web site responsibility is shared between the marketing department,
individual business units that create text, and web developers that
create individual web pages. There is usually no one person with
overall responsibility for the site.
The process for updating is unclear in many cases. This raises
the need for effective teamwork across a number of disciplines, as
well as a system for content management to ensure consistency and
adherence to broad corporate guidelines across the web sites.
In terms of dedicated resources for corporate web sites, 40% of
respondents claimed they employ just two to five people whereas 22%
employ teams of over ten.
