Well, as the month draws to a close a new copy of .net magazine appears. Always good for some ranting 🙂 and this month carries on the traditions. I haven’t had the magazine for long so this is an “early stage” rant and that should be borne in mind. Remember, despite my misgivings about some of the crap they vomit out publish I am still a subscriber so it cant be all that bad!

Things do get off to a bad start this month though. Page 11 (first page of content) is where the hits begin. Now I am aware that as journalists the “reporters” for .net should be excused somewhat when it comes to understanding the mechanisms of surveys but even so…

Under the headline “No site, no sales” they have a three column article about how recent “research” shows 85% of people polled would have doubts about buying from a company that didn’t have a website. It goes on to produce dire proclamations backed up with “hard figures” (for example: “67% of small businesses believe it would take ten times longer to create a site than the average” – what does that even mean???) and finishes with the amazing proclamation that “a shop should sell stuff, a club should have membership info and a hotel should have online booking.” Fantastic.

Now the problem with this: The survey was comissioned by 1&1 and surveyed 1848 people. The number of people is acceptable but very low to make a comparison nationally. The big warning sign is the fact the survey was comissioned by a web host which sells online site creators and small business tools. Without going into this too much, from what I can gather the survey was carried out online which increases the disparity.

It seems a reasonable assumption that people confident enough about the web to take part in these sort of online surveys (lightspeed is a good example) would also have a higher threshold for requiring a shop to have an online presence. If I carried out this survey in the local villages where I live, I very much doubt if 10% of people would expect a shop to have a website before they would buy. You dont go online to check out your local newsagent before you buy the paper for example.

The article appears to imply that for small businesses to succeed they need a website. This, while good for business, is not really true. Most small businesses are aimed at selling goods to the local community, and in this situation the website is pointless. No one goes on line to check if the shop 200m away has a website before they buy. I agree that any business wishing to trade on a larger scale should have a website, but even then it is hard to think that 85% of their customers require one.

Ask yourself, when was the last time you saw an offline advert for a company and checked to see if they had a website before you bought. I have never done it. I have checked websites of online companies (eBuyer for a recent example), but they are online so of course they have a website.

To add scorn to their shoddy standards, in the sidebar of the article they “Name and shame” three sites which have “dismal” websites. Apparently SiteMorse looked at the websites for the FTSE100 companies and graded them. As always, Tesco.com gets slated – “zero for functionality” – yet even in the article it says they get hundreds of thousands of online customers. Oddly, the disparity of this escapes the .net journalists.

Instead of slating the site – visions of over paid designers sitting around in berets tutting about the site spring to mind – surely this implies the industry needs to overhaul its “testing” procedures (if there are any… I suspect it is just on a whim). Saying “bad design costs customers” seems true and is logically sound – however then saying the top online sellers have bad design lessens the point drastically. Tescos has an excellent website which hoards of people use for online shopping. I have used it and like it. I find it very functional and easy to use. What are the testers criteria if this real world example of a success is graded a failure?

Can anyone tell me?