Irish SMEs feel they aren’t getting enough benefit out of their websites, according to a new study from the Irish Small and Medium Enterprise Association. ISME’s e-Business survey 2008 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 email and website packages as a sales tool but they haven’t utilised it as such,” said Mark Fielding, ISME chief executive. He said these businesses were misled in the past by web designers and that this had left a sour taste in their mouths. This view was backed up by survey responses: 44 percent of businesses found commissioning a website to be a frustrating or confusing experience, while 41 percent thought web designers tried to baffle them with jargon. The road to bringing these businesses online is a two-way street, according to Fielding, who 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 clients ask of them. For more on this story see ENN.ie. (See Issues 183 and 184 for tips on web design and development.)
Mar 13
March 14th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
I’ve always felt that web design companies take clients for a ride even though I’m a web designer myself!
They charge a fortune while baffling them with tech speak and high repeating maintenance costs.
I’ve run into a few sites recently that I had to re-design and they seem to have been left unfinished in the hope of getting more work down the line!
March 18th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Heres a possible reason to the above!
http://www.techcentral.ie/article.aspx?src=ezine&id=11884
July 11th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Hi all,
Blog looks great by the way.
For a web designer to really design a great SME website, he or she needs to take some time to understand the business with emphasis been placed on the SME’s customers.
If you really think about it, the purpose of any business website is to drive revenues and sales and unless this is the start point, its not going to add anything in real terms to the business.
What often needs to be first overcome is the client’s lack of understanding about the web and the designer’s lack of understanding of the client’s business. Once this has happened both parties are in a position to work together to deliver a working SME website.
Cheers,
Niall