Over a third (39 per cent) of Britain’s small and medium businesses believe their closest competitor’s website is better than their own; with 20 per cent thinking their website doesn’t reflect the company’s brands.
The findings, which come from a study by Decibel Technology, also revealed that 44 per cent of people say they would consider not even doing business with a company that had an out of date or hard to navigate website and 36 per cent would be put off working for a company with a poor web presence.
Ben Harris, MD of Decibel Technology, said: “Web envy is good if it inspires businesses to maximise the performance of their own website but the consequences of not acting on this are rather more sobering. What these findings really dramatize is that UK business could potentially be losing hundreds of millions of pounds by deflecting their trade - and even talent - to the competition.
“UK businesses clearly understand a website’s influence on potential customers and recognise that competitors’ websites are often much better but in many situations have their hands tied because they haven't got the right software in place to do anything about it – or budgets are being approved too slowly.”
The research found that 30 per cent blame website problems on clunky content management, with 36 per cent of SMBs say there is too much complexity surrounding CMS, making selection and purchasing hard.
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