UK manufacturing SMEs failing on e-commerce?

New research from package delivery specialist, ParcelForce, has revealed that UK small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) may be failing to realise the potential benefits of e-commerce. The survey, which covered 174 manufacturing SMEs in London, Anglia, West Midlands, West Yorkshire, the South and South East, reveals that, although 83% of respondents are using their website as a marketing tool, many are failing to turn business leads into sales with only 30% of companies offering online order processing or trading. The research included 401 interviews with directors and senior managers of firms that exported and had a website presence of some kind. “The results show that the manufacturing sector is failing to cash-in on the business benefits of e-commerce because they don’t have the necessary infrastructure in place to support their website,” explains Chris Kalla-Bishop, ParcelForce’s commercial director. And in case you’re wondering why an organisation such as ParcelForce is interested in manufacturing SMEs, Kalla-Bishop adds: “Although having a website is critically important, it’s only one component of an e-commerce strategy and needs to be backed up by an infrastructure that allows customers to buy products online and enable companies to fulfil the order and deliver the goods – either by themselves or via a third party.” And the trend remains the same in export markets with 57% of SMEs using their website to develop export markets, but only 21% of these processing and handling orders online. The actual proportion of export business conducted over the web is therefore small, with 91% of respondents confirming that less than 10% of their export business comes through the web.