Weybridge, Berkshire
UK web designers are increasingly required to include ecommerce functionality in the sites they build for clients, according to the latest independent research published by ecommerce software supplier, Actinic. At the same time, the average price that web designers are charging for building an online store is falling. The report is based on an independent survey by pfa Research among a random sample of 76 web design companies. 
You can download a copy of the report here
"The proportion of websites enabled for online selling has really shot up compared with last year", explains Chris Barling, Actinic's CEO. "As the market both gets bigger and more competitive, it is important for designers to keep costs down and deployment speed up. Packaged solutions are the future here, and we are working hard on moving our products forward to get ahead of this particular game".
Chris Lamle of Northstar Design says, With the growing pressure on web designers to deliver more for less I foresee continued growth in the use of packaged solutions, in order to maximise time and cost efficiencies.
Summary of the findings
- Actinics report revealed that between 2003 and 2004, the percentage of sites built by web designers that included ecommerce functionality rose from 17% to 23%.
- In the same period, the average price charged by a web designer to build an online store for a client decreased from £3825 in 2003, to £2293 in 2004.
- This downward pressure on pricing may be related to a move towards in-house development on the part of medium-sized companies, with smaller businesses becoming increasingly important to web designers. The proportion of web designers clients having between 50 and 99 employees fell by more than a half across the board.
- While Microsoft .Net is still the single preferred server technology for most web designers building online stores, its popularity has declined by 14% since last year, to 34%. Taken together, UNIX-based operating systems including Linux overtook Microsoft-based systems as the ecommerce platform of choice among web designer, rising to 40%.
- Macromedia Dreamweaver remains the most popular site-building tool, used by over 80% of web designers.
- Overall, web designers agreed that 'ecommerce packages let you develop online stores faster' (mean score 3.9 out of 5), and 'it's easier to build an online store using an ecommerce package' (3.7). Half of all the web designers interviewed recognised Actinic as a leading supplier of professional ecommerce products. 33% of web designers perceived Actinic as a leading supplier of ecommerce solutions for the professional web design industry. Actinic also achieved a 13% increase in brand recognition since 2003.
