Britain's companies fail web tests

Britain's businesses still haven't grasped the importance that a good web presence has for their businesses.

This applies equally to both large and small companies according to two surveys released this month.

One survey carried out by market research company Nomensa looked at the websites of all of the FTSE 100 companies – Britain's most valuable firms according to their share prices.

Each site was manually tested against industry-standard criteria and three-quarters of the sites were found to be at risk of losing business because consumers find their websites hard to use according to a survey.

Only 24 of the 99 met the minimum levels. Only two of those – DMGT, owner of the Daily Mail, and mining firm Xstrata – came close to the medium level of accessibility.

Common complaints included fixed text size which meant people with visual difficulties or those wanting to acess the sites on a small screen were unable to read the content easily.

According to Nomensa, this can affect not only people with visual impairments, no matter how minor or major, but also people using small screens to read web pages, such as on a handheld computer or phone.

Other common flaws were poor quality HTML code, poor use of lists, misuse of headings, use of pop-up windows and not providing an alternative text when images are included on a page.

At the other end of the scale, one in five small businesses still do not recognise the importance consumers place upon a web presence. This was the finding in research commissioned by web hosting and domain name registration company 1 & 1.