E-commerce website owners survey: report

The research involved a survey of the owners of businesses with websites, in Dumfries and Galloway, looking at: the perceived success of the company website in terms of the expectations of the owner; the levels of interest in seminars, workshops, tools and fact sheets as developed and made available to clients by Scottish Enterprise; and preferred attendance times for seminars and workshops.

A telephone survey of Scottish Enterprise Dumfries and Galloway clients was undertaken following the distribution of marketing material by mail to those clients who have web sites. Of 604 clients, 136 calls were made, and 63 useful conversations resulted.

Most clients had received a mail shot recently, and most had read it. Finds that 13% reported their web sites were performing above expectations, 61% as expected, and 26% below expectations. Per client, an average of 2 event topics were cited as of interest. A clear preference for evening workshops was evident. Interest in fact sheets and on-line tools was minimal. Generally, people preferred the concept of instructor led tuition, i.e. seminars and workshops.

Suggests that to obtain further penetration, it may be appropriate to extend the survey period and survey a larger number of clients, but that the trends as described are unlikely to change over a larger number of clients surveyed. Alternatively, an e-mail survey could be used for the remaining clients not surveyed, however, effort would be required to extract data returned in that fashion.