If you are a struggling dot.com and you cannot understand why your site is not attracting huge amounts of traffic, you might need a dollop of custard.

As internet fever cools and investors become increasingly sceptical about sinking their hard-earned cash into the net, a new agency called Hot Custard has launched offering dot.coms an online rescue service.

Set up by former Marks & Spencer retail marketeer Jan Selfridge and ex-creative director of Abbott Mead and Vickers Ian Standing, Hotcustard.com hopes to fix everything from marketing and technology problems to any e-fulfilment difficulties.

So why the off-the-wall name? "You can pour custard on anything and you can make it better," quips Selfridge, who knows that in a crowded agency marketplace the name will be hard for budding net entrepreneurs to forget.

Convinced that too many web sites lack a coherent strategy, she claims Hot Custard's hard-nosed approach is attracting a lot of interest from floundering dot.coms. "It's not about the number of whizzy devices you can put on a screen, it's about having a purpose for being on the web and devising a strategy to drive people to your site. "There are an awful lot of dot.coms who have got a good idea but have not executed it from a marketing perspective. Unless your site appeals to the people you are aiming at, it's not going to work."

Hot Custard offers sickly web sites an e-doctor service and currently one of the most common complaints is falling traffic. In finding a cure, the Hot Custard team will assess the functionality of the site, its ease of use, and how people get to it from other destinations on the web.

Both Selfridge and Standing have strong backgrounds in creative advertising and they are pretty scathing about the calibre of recent dot.com campaigns. Selfridge says that dot.coms have been over-ambitious in their advertising and have strayed from relaying the key simple messages. "What they have to offer often gets lost in off-the-wall executions," he adds.

It is often bewildering for internet businesses to know where to go for reliable advice if they are in trouble, and if they are not careful the risks are they can be fleeced by an unscrupulous operator.

Jon Bains, chairman of new media agency Lateral claims dot.coms generally expect too much from agencies. "If agencies could solve all dot.com problems they wouldn't be agencies. The reason why most people work in agencies is because they do not have the level of focus or expertise you need to run a successful internet company."

Lateral handles new media strategies and marketing for high-profile clients such as Stella Artois and is currently creating sites for the new Harry Potter book and Nick Park's forthcoming film, Chicken Run. Bains maintains there is a tendency to treat dot.coms generically when in reality the problems they individually encounter can be fundamentally different.

Typical problems Lateral has come across include having to find and coordinate 27 different distributors in Europe and trying to set up and manage specialist multi-lingual customer support for online sales of wine and sexy lingerie. Management consultancies are often the fall-back for serious dot.com players. Nick Greenspan has successfully set up Bainlab, the internet incubator service which is part of management consultancy Bain&Co, and he is acutely aware of the pitfalls new agencies such as Hot Custard are trying to remedy.

"Dot.coms can encounter a raft of difficulties. The biggest positive problem is that their systems are not robust enough to survive the growth of their business." Not putting in place proper customer fulfilment processes and failing to accurately anticipate the costs of acquiring customers are other common troubles.

Sites are often not laid out in the way consumers want at the outset and have to be re-arranged, which is complicated and costly. The bill for re-designing a portal can run to hundreds of thousands of pounds. Hot Custard hopes to succeed by cleverly exploiting a niche in the market. But other new media agencies warn that they will find it extremely frustrating dealing with dot.coms. Lateral insists that new internet companies pitch to them first before they will consider working for them. Bains says: "My confidence in dot.coms has been quite battered in the past by dealing with people who don't have a clue. They have a half-baked idea and they expect you to sort it out."

He complains that internet entrepreneurs often get so gripped by an idea that they fail to think it through and do not prepare properly. So eventually they find they cannot distribute what they hoped to or are unable to get around the regulations of a particular country.

Getting an internet business off the ground is hugely demanding, both physically and emotionally, and it is clearly sensible to hire independent quality advice to support any new e-venture. The editor of New Media Age, Mike Butcher, says it can be difficult for the serious dot.com players to get help because of a growing mood of scepticism in the market which has been generated by some flaky online business-to-consumer propositions. He says: "If there are any serious players who are in dire straits either they did not get enough funding or the right people."

While Hot Custard undoubtedly sounds soothing, warm and nice. Its sudden appearance on the virtual table is a clear indication that a cold and unforgiving shake-out is starting. Those internet entrepreneurs who rushed onto the web, borrowing more than they could afford with ill-thought out business plans, look set to receive their just desserts.