The survey of nearly 500 top UK businesses was conducted on behalf of the software company in February this year, to establish how the internet is being used in business, and what difficulties it is presenting.
According to Macromedia, use of the internet is standard, with 92% of respondents having a web site, and 28% also having an intranet. Most of these (53%) were built in-house, 30% were built externally, and 11% were a collaborative effort.
The use of a corporate web site is, in the main, for information and advertising, with only 11% actually use their site for selling products.
According to Macromedia, the majority of companies, having spent a substantial amount of money either outsourcing or requisitioning their own IT departments' time to develop a site, have no idea whether that budget was spent wisely, wasted or somewhere in between.
"The measurable amount of ROI is very subjective," said Fiona Coughlan, Managing Director for Macromedia Northern Europe.
"The most surprising thing about this research is that it shows that most are prepared to invest in a strategic internet strategy without having the means to measure the return for the investment," she added.
Content management was voted the biggest headache for companies. Forty-nine percent of respondents said that the problem lies in keeping the content up-to-date and retaining consistency across the site.
The research also tackled the issue of workflow within web development and management teams. Generally, results showed that web site responsibility is shared between the marketing department, individual business units that create text, and web developers that create individual web pages. There is usually no one person with overall responsibility for the site.
The process for updating is unclear in many cases. This raises the need for effective teamwork across a number of disciplines, as well as a system for content management to ensure consistency and adherence to broad corporate guidelines across the web sites.
In terms of dedicated resources for corporate web sites, 40% of respondents claimed they employ just two to five people whereas 22% employ teams of over ten.