Macromedia identifies UK industry content trends

Recent research carried out by Macromedia has highlighted the current and future use of the Internet in Times 2000, how UK organisations are using the Internet as a business tool, how they anticipate their requirements changing, and what they believe are their greatest challenges.
The research found web content management is UK enterprises' biggest headache, with 49% of firms challenged in managing and maximising the effectiveness of their corporate websites.
Fiona Coughlan, Managing Director Northern Europe said: "We are not surprised to learn that content management is a major challenge for managing the growth of a website and its functionality. This fits well with our launch of Contribute, an easy-to-use content management tool."
Macromedia also identified that 53% of websites are built in-house.
According to Coughlan: "The UK's leading companies are increasingly investing in in-house web design and development skills and solutions.
"Moving forward, as web development and content contribution tools become more accessible to employees, we expect the internal web development teams to grow considerably and the skills to deploy more sophisticated applications become more readily available”.
It seems that within UK enterprises, responsibility for website control needs to be clarified. Macromedia studies found that this is often shared across a variety of business departments, which complicates the process of updating websites and managing the content.
Finally, the research discovered that the use of the Internet as a business tool is, as expected, widespread and highlights the growing sophistication of the web.
Coughlan concluded: “Like any new technology, there is a great deal of confusion and hype surrounding the Internet and how it can be used by companies to boost commerce in the UK. However, underneath this confusion lie genuine business issues and it would seem that content management is currently top of that list”.
(MM)