Horror stories abound in which SMEs paid thousands of pounds - £10,000 was not uncommon - for websites that took an age to arrive, ages to download and, worst of all, couldn't be changed into something useful. How did this happen?
It came about because the profession of web "designers" decided that outlandish graphics and "coloured space" were essential to a website, and that their "artistic" freedom was at stake if these principles were not applied. No one bothered to check how long it took to access the sites they pumped - or rather inched - out.
Many bore an odd but obvious similarity to the designer's own corporate site. But these designers are easy to spot - they uniformly wear black, all day, every day. And boy do the blackshirts love graphics - the number-one enemy of an efficient, flexible, easily upgradable website. It's a philosophy thing, too.
To many, the concept of "cyberspace" is as silly as science fiction. Millions prefer reality, or at least a reality-based artistic expression of it. Graphic designers, however, are the only people who want the graphics to look as if they've come from a computer. "But many of us, millions more of us indeed, just don't," says one software engineer, preferring anonymity.
A very cheap, artistic alternative to studio graphics, and one you can do at home, can be achieved using the software supplied by Segmentis. Download the software (www.segmentis.com), slot in your digital photo, and bit by bit the image filter removes various layers of detail and transforms the pic into an impressionist image - "without the usual loss of focus, colour or edge". With practice, the effects are magical. Use this software, and surfers will think you spent four years at art school. First and foremost, SMEs should employ a web "architect". And insist as a condition of contract that the site must download in less than 10 seconds under optimal conditions.
To see how a small business can get it right, try www.cos.co.uk, the site of world-leading optical equipment maker Cambridge Optical Sciences (COS), based in Suffolk. Since it unveiled its very simple site three years ago, more than 80% of its overseas orders now come from first-time inquirers - all serious industrial companies - surfing the web. Next year COS will top £1 million in turnover. Managing director Martin Lawrence says: "The first web-attributable order came from the US - from Nasa in fact. Since then they have flowed regularly and we've achieved a high order conversion rate of around 50%." He adds: "All of these orders are handled electronically up to the point of dispatch, giving us further economies in office processing. It's difficult to understand why use of this most economical of marketing tools is not more widespread among UK firms."
The COS site took less than a week to construct and cost less than £200, though photos were already sourced. Prior to the internet, says Lawrence, "small companies such as ours, with highly specialised technologies, could only operate in North America because of the scale of the operation relative to market size." Now, in the broadest terms, it levels the global playing field. But much more frequently, designers forget the basics. Most surfers want sharp, direct content, and they want it quickly. People forget that many visitors to websites go there to find contact information. Why? Because if you dial 192 and don't know the exact town or spelling of the street, they hang up.
Rowan Douglas, who founded several global insurance portals and now works for City broker Willis as head of e-commerce, said: "You can often find a wanted website via alltheweb.com - just to find its phone number. For SMEs it is utterly vital for them to be easily 'discoverable' by potential customers located far away." Next, make sure your first page will fit into a 15-inch screen, that the front page has a site index and that your phone number is immediately prominent. Email-only contact points annoy time-poor consumers. Always add customer case histories - it shows you care - or short biographies of key staff. Remember that everyone on the web expects everything for free, but they will pay if the product or service is specialised, exactly fills their need and does so quickly. The fact that 98% of dot.coms ignored these basics ensured their doom.
The daftest web dreams were always held by those who had never started or run a profitable mainstream business. Their philosophy was based not on economics but on business school economics. The vast majority of dot. coms tried to bolt a business on to a website, rather than the reverse. A site that got it right is www.amplebosom.com, the brainchild of a Yorkshire housewife. Laugh? Go ahead, but it is one of the best examples of successful "niche marketing" (no pun intended). And it's profitable.
Recently I bought a Dell PC online. None of the fixed PC package offerings on its website suited. I didn't need a monitor, but I did want a multi-functional desktop printer/copier. And I did want a Zip drive, CD-Rom, floppy and modem slots, all in one neat tower. But because the site carried a phone number, Dell coped with my finicky needs in 15 minutes. Where to find help? Despite the "org", www.businessadviceonline.org is a "gov.uk" production - the website of the Small Business Service. The site is reasonably well designed, and its strength, predictably, is in covering government departments and regulations. It links prominently to www.ukonline forbusiness.gov.uk, which has specific advice about the government's network of e-commerce consultants.
The web and money still don't mix very efficiently. Have you ever sent an email to your bank manager, for example? He must be the only man of significance in my business life whom I can't email. Next, some companies suspect that high street banks levy higher charges on firms that trade on the web, due to the increased general risk. But there is only anecdotal evidence of this so far. The web can also be very useful for raising money. Not convinced? Last year Trevor Elworthy, of Protocol Digital Solutions in Milton Keynes, whose company is leading the way in digital photo libraries and kiosk concepts (BT is a client), needed some capital. Frustrated by the time and humiliation of being assessed by the usual banking culprits, he put a short proposal on the web. Within weeks he'd raised £400,000. Is this a record? All of it came from small, or rather tiny, investors, by word of mail - "mailmouths", as he now calls them.
The web has yet to create an efficient working space where small companies can raise not insignificant funds directly from private individuals. Now there's an idea.
Marcus Gibson is a research journalist specialising in technology, innovation and small hi-tech companies. www.marcusgibson.com
