By Jo Best, 21 May 2004 11:55
NEWS Companies are choosing to celebrate the talk of recovery by splashing out on updating their corporate websites, according to analysts.
Around a quarter of companies are planning to spend $1m or more on site operations this year, compared with one-fifth who said they would do the same in 2003, analyst house JupiterResearch said.
Almost half of companies also said they were scheduling in between two and four new development initiatives, with updated design and search functions being top of the list.
A similar percentage of website operators, however, said that the thought improving website usability was their "key challenge" for this year, according to the Website Spending and Governance Trends report.
A recent Disabled Rights Commission investigation found 80 per cent of websites could not be accessed by the disabled running contrary to UK legislation that demands websites meet certain accessibility standards.
The JupiterResearch report found that producing a corporate website is often governed by conflicting objectives the IT department's desire to cut costs, the marketing department's hankering to push branding, for example which can mean cost wins out over business value, or simply that the company doesn't get the most from the website.
The analyst group recommends that one exec be charged with overseeing the site changes and keep a clear idea of the business value during the site development.
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