EBusiness Daily, May 22, 2002 - Whether it's an e-commerce site or your company's intranet, one good way to ensure that your Web site dies a slow, unprofitable death is to fail to meet the expectations of people who visit it.

This is the warning from Enterpulse, which conducted a survey showing that most Internet users aren't finding what they need on the sites they visit, including their own companies' sites.

One problem identified by Enterpulse is that many organizations don't have a clear focus for their online initiatives and that responsibility for the development and maintenance of the Web site becomes a corporate "hot potato," passed around among departments with no clear mandate or leadership.

According to Enterpulse CEO and Chairman Michael Reene, "Most sites provide adequate basics -- current information, for example -- but they're woefully unprepared to reach the next level of user expectations." Worse still, he says, those responsible for the site aren't even aware that they're falling short.

In the survey conducted among business professionals, the more common complaints listed about Web sites were difficult navigation, a lack of interactive tools, and a failure of the site to remember who the user is. A general lack of patience was found among those surveyed. Less than two-thirds of the respondents say they rarely, if ever, return to an inadequate site. Reene calls this the "Internet death penalty."

Some key findings from the report include:

• About 90 percent of those surveyed said they expect a response within 24 hours to questions submitted through a Web site. Of those, 50 percent wanted that response in eight hours.
• Nearly 80 percent said they thought that most Web sites were designed from an internal company perspective, rather than a user perspective.
• Only half said they were proud of their own company's intranet, but almost 80 percent said they look to their corporate intranet to help them do their job.
• Most didn't know who, or which division, should be the "keeper" of the company intranet.
• Almost everyone surveyed said it was either "very important" or "extremely important" that the information they need to do their jobs be accessible, up-to-date, and easy to find. However, half said that wasn't the case.