CorpComms Magazine

While two thirds of online companies use Facebook to promote their business, less than 30 per cent find the platform remotely effective in driving traffic to their website, according to the world's largest survey of website traffic.

Micro-blogging site Twitter fared equally badly with just 27 per cent of online companies attributing any rise in website visitor numbers to their presence on the platform, revealed the study from software company Intellimon in conjunction with the University of Bradford.

Most online activities are carried out by a single individual in the business. Nine out of ten digital communicators said that driving web traffic was entirely their own responsibility; three quarters claimed sole responsibility for email marketing; and seven out of ten had full charge of marketing via social media. Perhaps more surprisingly, 84 per cent were the only website builder in their organisation and 78 per cent were responsible for all digital design.

E-commerce is a relatively new arena; more than half of the online companies currently in operation have existed for less than two years, and just one in ten has been around for a decade or more. The biggest single inhibitor to generating more traffic to the company site was lack of experience, followed by a lack of resources and lack of time, with difficulty 'staying focused' coming in a close fourth.

The digital demographic may not be quite as expected; 60 per cent of those doing business online are 50 years-old or over. But despite their dominance in numbers, it was those aged between 18-43 who recorded the greatest success with their digital drive to market their websites. More than a quarter of this age group rated their success as 'good' or 'excellent' compared to an average of 13 per cent across other age categories.

Paul Smithson, chief executive of Intellimon, said: 'We were genuinely shocked by some of the results across several areas; social media, training, outsourcing and demographics sections all threw up some very unexpected results. It's a real eye-opener, even for experienced online marketers.'

share me: del.icio.us | digg | reddit | Tweet