An interesting view of the Sitemorse survey of the top global 500 retailers comes from Retail Blogger, Bill Brown.

 "Many of the poor performers were online-only retailers ... It's surprising that such retailers don't pay more attention to their website effectiveness. After all, their website is all they've got: they have no physical shops from which to trade.
"I see this as the equivalent of a physical retail shop trying to trade with its front door locked. Just imagine, you're standing behind the counter waiting for your customers to flood in, but they can't. What an absurd situation."

Bill takes our point "it's not about money being thrown at a problem. It's more about getting the basics right, and many smaller retailers are doing just that, and delivering the goods to their online customers.

What this report is saying is that by spending relatively modest amounts on your website you can achieve real effectiveness in your e-commerce operations."

His blog has also received a really telling response from one of the large retailers mentioned. " ..We are aware of certain shortcomings within our sites at present which will be remedied when we launch our new websites in 2012. " This is an excuse we have heard so often over the years. Why on earth, if they are aware of problems, wait until next year to put them right?