The McCannics e-survey, July 1997

Comments on web-page use

- respondents who think that the time and money they have spent on their web-pages has NOT been worthwhile.

"Haven't had any response from our Home Page that we are aware of. Our web page is an excerpt from our corporate brochure giving information about our company and is linked to our e-mail address."

"Not useful yet"

"(we would very much appreciate the services of a dedicated marketeer including web-marketing but don't have resources to finance such an option."

"I'm not sure that we know how to use this type of advertising yet, to obtain the best results i.e.; orders on pads"

"useful for providing a world-wide market presence but difficult to publicize worldwide in the first place"

"(Our web pages were originally designed to marketing our services to the local marketplace. Unfortunately, as we are only resourced to deliver our services at the local markeplace the responses we have received have not been that sucessful and most of the email we have recieved has been either from overseas users or from university graduates writing disertations about competence based training and requesting more information. Responding to these enquiries has been both time consuming and has not resulted in any additional business as yet. We have however evaluated the success of the site and as such have developed a further web site which, when fully developed will provide users with electronic access to our training programmes / NVQ courses)"

"Successful with an information site, but not generating adequate revenue to date. Some promotional gains however"

"Our pages need to be greatly smartened up, then publicised through trade journals serving our target markets. This is in hand. I am not sure that UK business has got the habit of web browsing as yet. A major source of frustration is that most search engines are US based and do not seem to find us easily, if at all, even when we have given them our URL."

"Little or no interest shown by others in contacting us through web pages. Little support from web supplier as we run Mac machines and they are PC based."

"Advertising, We have had a web-page for over 10 months and modified it regularly, we have had a few e-mails from it but it has NOT generated any new customers and all our excisting customers bar one small client do not use e-mail as a form of communication therefore we are starting to regard the internet as a waste of space!!!"

"The pages give details of all our properties available for rent, and our terms and conditions which are useful for prospective tenants - however in business terms we have no need for tenants' responses on the internet because we have far too many people looking for properties anyway; we urgently need extra properties to let - and seemingly local landlords do not find their local letting agent by looking on the net."

"as added marketing over and above that provided by my printed materials such as brochures and mailshots"

"To provide information to potential clients - no sales leads yet."

"We get useless enquiries from USA, not much from UK. Best part is having site on our business literature which impresses our computer customers."

"Our own web site is a showcase for potential customers, we also use our other web site to test internet marketing strategies and new technologies"

"early days yet!"

"Our original WWW page is a bit lame!, I am currently designing a new WWW site which will hopefully overcome the shortcommings of our current page"

"Early days"

"web site fairly new. no sales yet from it, but its more of a service than a sales idea."

"Publicise writing and speaking. In future we will support clients directly via the Web site."

"Pages are used for marketing, there is difficulty finding the best Search Engines. Profesional services are too expensive for a new small business."

"Set up for selling on the Internet. Not successful as the UK coverage has not reached a critical mass yet. Now in the process of re-designing the web site to sell less but offer more information. This will mean less man hours keeping it up to date until the consumer mass is available on the internet"

"We simply have it for a prescence and for the experience of 'being there'"

"Inability to accurately target customers; Inability to accurately measure; not cost effective when measure against other media. It should be noted that with the introduction of 'Virtual Chambers' the conditions will change."

"Total Failure"

"We have found it very difficult to find suitable european search engines to advertise our web site on"

"We have used the web purely for advertising our products. First in an interactive project with BBC Radio (which also resulted in television coverage) - and subsequently with a web wide murder mystery with prizes supplied by many internet suppliers. Overall the results have been disappointing - most respondents are not of sufficient authority to do business with. Despite our presence on the web for three years we still only get an average of two worthwhile web-generated enquiries a month. We are currently redesigning the site in an attempt to target our potential customers more accurately."

"It is mainly used as a marketing tool in the hope that prospective clients will be able to view the current portfolio of work. However, I have found that although 50% of my clients are on the net, most people only use it for email and do not, or are unable to, use a web browser!"

"NOT IN GENERAL USE WITHIN THIS INDUSTRY"

"(I use my web site to advertise the menu. So far - (3 months) - zero response!)"