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SMEs want better service from designers
03-03-2008
by Emmet Ryan

Irish SMEs feel they aren't getting enough benefit out of their websites, according to a new study from ISME.

The Irish Small and Medium Enterprise Association's SME e-Business survey 2008 has found that 26 percent of SMEs have no website and of those that do 49 percent are unhappy with it. "Many small- and medium-sized businesses would have been sold e-mail and website packages as a sales tool but they haven't utilised it as such," Mark Fielding, chief executive of ISME told ENN.

Fielding said these businesses were misled in the past by web designers and that this had left a sour taste in their mouths. "There were too many fly-by-night cowboys out there in the late 1990s. I think many of those [that don't have a website] attempted a website in the past but lost the will to live," he said.

This view was backed up by the responses to the survey. According to the report, 44 percent of businesses found commissioning a website to be a frustrating or confusing experience while 41 percent thought web designers tried to confuse them with jargon.

The road to bringing these businesses online is a two-way street, according to Fielding. He said that managers and staff in SMEs will have to be trained up in order to be able to reap the benefits of websites while designers will in turn have to pay closer heed to what their clients ask of them.

Though the figures on website implementation and satisfaction are not terribly promising, the study did produce some encouraging statistics. Broadband usage is high amongst SMEs with only 4 percent of those surveyed still relying on dial-up connections. Interestingly, 20 percent of SMEs said they had mobile 3G or GPRS service and 74 percent are using DSL broadband.

The role of e-mail as a communications tool has also grown substantially in recent years, according to the study. A total of 61 percent of businesses use e-mail for more than half their correspondence, almost double the number in 2004 and up from 47 percent in 2006. More than a quarter of the firms surveyed use e-mail for over 80 percent of all correspondence.

SMEs are also making greater use of search engines in their business. The report found that 64 percent of businesses targeted specific key search terms, an increase of 7 percent on 18 months ago. Eighteen percent of those targeting specific search terms are buying search engine advertising such as Google AdWords.