The effectiveness of commercial Internet Web sites: a user’s perspective Available to Purchase

The main thrust of this article is to discuss a survey of 60 companies, predominantly from the user’s perspective, that use the Internet currently; and to examine the effectiveness of their current Internet Web sites. The results of an online survey were subjected to statistical analysis and this revealed some interesting findings. It was found that 30 percent of the companies had facilities for conducting transactions online and only 7 percent charged users for Web site access. Overall, the Web sites rated highly in terms of ease of access, content and structure but scored poorly for their number of unique features. Of the six industry sectors surveyed (electronic commerce, entertainment and leisure, financial and banking services, information services, retailing and travel and tourism), it was the retailing sector that showed the best overall performance. The best individual Web site in the survey was the Financial Times (http://www.ft.com). It is suggested that this initial survey work could be advanced by extending the sample size and by devising a programme of more extensive statistical analysis.