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Reasons why NZ Companies and Businesses should not be let loose on the Internet (Whisper: they are not very good and they don't care) Scary stuff isn't it, these are NZ businesses that pride themselves on being the best and then they let themselves down by not knowing what they do. They do not have the commitment to succeed, to do what is correct for their business in the Internet Age About now the knives should be out, ready to cut down the tall poppy, how dare someone tell them they don't know what they are doing. Sorry guys and gals, No one has to tell you, you don't know what you are doing; You do that yourself, just by what you do or don't do. And it shows, the report was completed in 2003 and today what has changed, we still see the same mistakes and the "she will be right" attitude. How can New Zealand advance if people in business don't care Need convincing, a tap on the head, a wake up pill. Read Media Release Report finds Top 100 Kiwi company websites are a waste of money Shock New Zealand survey reveals how firms are 'sabotaging' their own ability to be found on the Internet Christchurch, 23-Jul-03 - Respected search optimisation company Web Rank has today launched a study on the search engine compatibility of the websites of the country's leading organisations. The study reveals that every website belonging to our top 100 businesses contains significant design flaws that make it harder for them to be found in search engines, thereby negatively impacting the potential revenue of the organisation. "In designing their sites as they have done, nearly all of New Zealand's top performing companies are sabotaging their own ability to be found by their target market(s)," says Director Kalena Jordan. Most Internet users rely on search engines to find product and service providers. Unless they know the exact website address (URL) or search by the company or brand name, they will try to find what they are looking for by using keywords typed into the search engine search box that describe a product or service's features, benefits or attributes. The major search engines publish their requirements "how to be found" but this information seems to be disregarded by most of New Zealand business websites The same survey was undertaken on Australian websites and we beat the Aussie's, NZ had a higher failure rate Look at the date of the press release 23 July 2003. it is now July 2009 what has changed. Consider today these two websites belonging to NZ companies. They have stores and a well represented presence New Zealand wide. They are household names. If you were looking for eye candy, the sites look nice, but on site one they have a shop listed in the wrong region, which tends to render the" where to shop" feature useless. They use PDF files. What is this NZ fascination with PDF files? Customers like to see what is available, not be required to download a PDF file. Site two, obviously a lot of money spent, what a waste because they cannot be found in the search engines for the products they sell. Who-ever built the site for them has placed in the meta tag description, not information about the site but information about the company that built the site. A practice the search engines frown upon. It is called spamming. These above examples are used only to illustrate that big business has not learnt, they don't know what they are doing, in effect they don't care and don't care businesses lose customers. How did it get to this state of affairs? Maybe the businesses do care after all, then why are they getting it wrong. Is it our political and business culture? The culture, we can do it ourselves, the hangover from the idea we can do anything with a piece of number 8 wire. The world moved on but unfortunately NZ did not and it generally recognized that in the world of the Internet, New Zealand is three years behind the rest of the world and that includes Australia. Is there a correlation between this and our OECD rankings? (Below Spain and above Greece) What will it take for businesses to get with the program? We can fire at them all the statistics in the world about what is happening overseas, the trends, the results, will it make a difference. How long will it take. A start for them would be to realize they don't know what they don't know and concentrate on what they do know, which is running their business. They should not assume that because they have a website, they are all grown up and in the Internet world. A website is more than eye candy. To inform, to sell, to reach the consumer a whole lot more is required. Now out here in NZ land do we wish to enter the world around us or quietly drift away, becoming those Islands at the bottom of the South Pacific. The world has moved on The consumers, the customers, they are out there, are NZ businesses interested.