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By Kate Hanaghan, 13 November 2001 16:35

NEWS Some of the UK's leading companies are being let down by basic errors on their corporate websites. An audit by website technology specialist business2www of every FTSE100 company site has revealed that while some have slick sites, others are being held back by poor technical performance. Business2www looked for errors, server response times and load speeds. The best of the bunch was reed-elsevier.com, while microprocessor design company ARM came in a miserable one hundredth. Philip Sheldon, director of business2www, described the majority of problems as being "rather basic and stupid" or relating to "careless build". He added: "It's not a big deal to put it right. Websites have a limited and specific use and if they can't even manage that the CEO is going to be pretty grumpy." Sheldon argued that pin-pointing responsibility for the site's performance is hard. Responsibility, he said, is "nowhere near senior enough". MarksandSpencer.com, which is a combined e-tail and corporate site, ranks at number 77. Peter Robinson, ecommerce director at Marks & Spencer, explained that the company has in place processes to locate and resolve issues with the site. There is a change control process for monitoring the update of new content as well as real time monitoring of failed pages. He said: "Tough decisions have been made by Marks & Spencer over the last year including the move to close European shops. It is clear Marks & Spencer is committed to, and praises, the achievements of its ecommerce activity." The results for the Marks & Spencer site contradict findings by Segue Software, which last month ranked the company first in a survey of website reliability and uptime. Sheldon concluded that within the next year the Financial Services Authority will set standards for the performance of a corporate website in a way that is comparable with an accounts audit of a company. The penalty, he said, could be something similar to the Stop Now Order handed out by the OFT (Office of Fair Trading) to protect consumers from unlawful traders. The full list of FTSE100 websites can be found at http//www.business2www.com from 19 November.