Simple Errors are Making Leicestershire Businesses Uncompetitive on the Internet.

<< back to news and reports

A new survey of websites belonging to Leicestershire businesses show that may of them will get passed over by visitors wanting to buy products and services because the basics of attracting business are being ignored once a business goes online.

black and white marketing conducted the survey throughout March and randomly checked the websites of 2,500 local businesses to check their sites for usability, compatibility, quality and accessibility.

The results showed that almost 60 percent of websites would put a customer off buying products and services from them. The results surprised Andrew Scaife, the owner of black and white marketing, "The actually quality of design of the websites was often very high, with only 10 percent of sites failing basic quality checks, a high number failed download time thresholds, sites should download in less than 20 seconds in order not to put off customers, 46 percent of sites took longer."

But the quality of the sites is the tip of the iceberg; black and white marketing also conducted simple usability and functional checks. Many sites did not work across different browser types including the increasingly popular FireFox, and over half of businesses contact details were incorrect, forcing emails to be undelivered to businesses, and almost 60 percent of sites had broken links. All these aspects work to undermine the trust that is needed in a website for customers to spend money with them.

The advice from black and white marketing is simple, and they suggest that each business owner needs to nominate someone within the business to check the site on a regular basis. But Andrew acknowledges that this is always possible, "small and medium businesses rightly concentrate on trading and often they cannot give the time they would like to their online presence". For a small investment any business can get the advice of an internet marketing company to assist them in getting more customers.

But the story doesn't end at just having a good website that invites customers in, you also have to get customers to your site, and Andrew believes that this is an area that's lacking too.

Usability and Search Engine friendly sites are an important aspect of black and white marketing's services. Their expertise in online marketing is available at any time, and initial telephone consultation is free.