Beantin

James Royal-Lawson

CMS

The state of Swedish websites 2012

Each year Web Service Award surveys Swedish web responsibles and web managers their opinion about the quality of their web sites and working environment as well as how they are intending to develop them.


Picture of a stage with a large projector screen in the background and audience in the foreground

570 Swedish web managers were surveyed during January of this year for the 2012 trend report including representatives from companies, public services, councils, and other organisations.

The proportion of each type of organisation (and indeed size) is not representative of Sweden as a whole. Large companies and organisations are hugely over-represented (76% of those surveyed, whilst only 0.56% of the total in Sweden), and smaller companies are massively under-represented (24% of survey, but 76% in Sweden as a whole). So some care has to be taken with the figures.

This survey gives us an insight into what web managers think and how they feel about the world of web they work with. It’s not a survey of the visitors of websites, neither is it a survey of management or, ultimately, decision makers.

The report (in Swedish) is a whopping 98 pages. There’s a huge amount of data in there. I’m just going to write about a few points which I feel deserve highlighting.

The year of mobile development

Almost half of respondents said that they will be increasing their digital investments in 2012 compared to 2011. It would appear that a good chunk of that money is going to go into developing mobile solutions. 42% said that they are planning to produce a mobile ready version of their website, and 21% said they were planning a mobile app during 2012.

Graph showing that 61% have no mobile solution at all

61% said that they didn’t currently have any form of mobile solution (neither app of mobile ready website), so if the web responsibles surveyed manage to achieve what they’ve planned then next year this figure should drop through the floor! 2012 is looking like the year of mobile development.

Lack of resources internally

Despite a constantly increasing amount of investment in digital channels, there hasn’t been a corresponding increase in internal resources that take care of them.

I find it quite shocking that despite the importance of websites for organisations, and the money invested in (re)developing them, a staggering 50% of respondents only work half-time with their sites. Only 23% at most are dedicated web managers working full time with their sites. Only 32% say that they have enough resources to manage their website’s content.

graph showing 36% work up to 25% with their websites

Given that almost half of the organisations surveyed are large organisations with over 500 employees (44%), the low number of dedicated web responsibles cannot be explained solely by a corresponding percentage of SME sites where it is would be more expected that a person has multiple roles.

With the time and knowledge needed to order from and work with external agencies, analyse and reflect upon visitor statistics and KPIs, take on board usability testing results, deciding what to A/B test and tweak on your website, chase content owners, meet and work with internal stake holders – amongst many other things – it’s no wonder that so many websites under deliver, or need to be (at often great cost) totally rebuilt every few years,

EpiServer dominates

Amongst the sites in the survey, EpiServer dominates overwhelmingly as the CMS of choice for the larger organisations (over 50 employees) with 50% using the Swedish platform to server up their websites.

graph showing 43% of all surveyed have EpiServer

It’s a different picture amongst the smaller organisations surveyed (less than 50 employees). Here we see EpiServer’s being used as the publishing tool for 22% of surveyed websites. 36% responded with “other”, which presumably includes an array of CMS tools created by smaller companies.

I’m surprised that WordPress didn’t feature higher amongst smaller companies. My experience is that it’s pretty much the default CMS choice for this size of company, but only 1% across the entire survey irrespective of organisation size (which is presumably just 5 respondents) said that WordPress powered their website.

Positive trends

Generally speaking most stats in the report point to positive developments with websites and how they are managed. One of the exceptions is the lack of (dedicated) resources to run, maintain and develop the web and digital presence of an organisation.

We’re learning and moving forward as web managers and web professionals, but It’s still early days, and I think many of the answers show that.


James Royal-Lawson+ is a digital strategist and web manager based in Stockholm Sweden.

10 Articles worth reading… (Spotted: Week 29-31, 2010)

BBC News website’s content management and publishing systems

The BBC Internet blog often produces some really good in-depth insights into how things work at the BBC. This time, in connection with the recent redesign of BBC News, they take a look at web management, web standards & their in-house CMS

Why QR Codes Are Poised to Hit the Mainstream

SL have just started testing Quick Response codes at a number of bus stops here in Stockholm. Co-incidentally Mashable writes “Why QR Codes Are Poised to Hit the Mainstream” around the same time. You shouldn’t produce any printed matter now without a QR Code in my opinion.

Half of site searches are unsuccessful: report

Half of site searches are unsuccessful. Yet studies have shown that site-searches result in a significantly higher conversion rate than the average. Clear opportunity for improvement there…

The Internet Generation Prefers the Real World

This article from Spiegel Online describes how the (German) Internet Generation would appear to prefers the Real World – or rather, that it is integrated into their lives but that they are not necessarily “internet experts”. What you can conclude is that there is no global norm when it comes to the internet generation and their internet usage. Read my earlier post about Internet usage and young Swedes in Sweden

18 Simple SEO Items Commonly Missed in Web Development

Not a bad list. Your next site won’t be worse if you follow all of these 18 points! There are, of course, more than 18 things that are normally missed.

Blog – Subdomain or Subfolder? Which Is Best?

More on the eternal question of on-domain, off-domain, or sub-folder blog – which is best? Well, they all can be in my opinion. Really does depend on each individual case.

Will the Real Browser Stats Please Stand Up?

Global visitor stats are always misleading. Make sure to always study the stats for your own site (and therefore visitor groups), especially browser version and viewport size before a redesign.

How long are intranet projects?

Steptwo write about how long an intranet project should be (it is often not given enough time) – As is often the case, similar things apply to Internet projects too.

Employees demand a clean intranet home page, no scrolling

Keep it above the fold! Employees demand a clean Intranet home page, no scrolling, fewer links.

Enterprise 2.0 Roll-up: Google Kills Wave, Collaboration Ain’t Easy

In this CMSWire article they’ve taken the example of how a global collaboration product (Google Wave) failed to be adopted and likened it to the difficulty of implementing collaborative tools within the Firewall. Fair few pearls of wisdom from some clued-up people.

For your reading pleasure… (week 9, 2010)

5 intranet trends for business managers in 2010

Janus lists 5 trends: metrics, mobility, social, task-based, usability. The same 5 equally apply to any web-based activity, not just intranets…

Is collaboration enough to connect-the-dots?

Some good solid advice on what components are needed to make collaboration capable of “joining the dots”. I’d add a 5th component to the list in the post – Low barrier to use. The easier it is to jump in, the more likely both people and content will be there. If it’s too awkward, complicated, or forced, then the other 4 components are going to under-deliver.

Every CMS fails and what you can do about it

Your content management system facilitates your publishing processes. That process changes over time, but not your CMS resulting in it’s ultimate failure as a tool. Three good bits of advice towards the end should you realise and accept the fact that your CMS is going to fail you.

Google’s SEO Report Card

Google did an internal assessment of 100 of their product pages against a whole load of SEO related criteria. Initially this was just an internal document, but Google have had the wisdom to realise this gem of a document to the big wide world. More interesting than Google’s own poor score for some criteria, the criteria themselves.

A Wiki of Social Media Monitoring Solutions

At the time of writing this wiki page listed 130 different social media monitoring tools, both free and paid. One to bookmark.

Reload this page with responsive web design DISABLED