Can you imagine a major company that does not use the web to communicate with its investors, clients, suppliers and would-be employees?

The largest companies operating across many countries have enormous territories of data, some current - some, unfortunately, out of date- and much of it run by subsidiaries and outside agencies.

Web Estate Governance was a phrase that didn't exist a few years ago, but as the importance of web communications has risen, more and more functions within organisations now have a vested interest in getting their messages across.

And the politics doesn't end inside the company, because more and more external regulation and outside standards are now in the mix. From EU rules on cookies to UK accessibility laws, the list of things a website needs to cover grows almost by the week.

Having a proper methodology for managing the website is much more crucial now than ever before, and having the tools to support that is essential for any web manager who wants to manage his or her time properly.

As websites have themselves grown in sophistication a number of different solutions for managing their content have developed. Whereas once websites required managers to be skilled in HTML coding, first 'what you see is what you get' editors such as Adobe's Dreamweaver and then bespoke content management systems became the order of the day.

These changes allowed 'non-techie' users to develop websites - but a consequence was that web managers using them did not necessarily understand exactly how they worked. Perhaps something else was needed beyond the content management system to ensure all worked well.

Sitemorse is used by many web managers in organisations large and small through the process of planning a site, getting it online and then ensuring it meets all its targets.

Beginning as the tool of choice for those who wanted to ensure their site was free of broken links and code errors, through various versions the Sitemorse software 'engine' has grown and developed alongside the web to become something that can be used much more holistically as part of the planning process of determining what the site should achieve, to building it while ensuring it covers all the necessary bases around internal 'brand' compliance, to meeting current standards around code quality and speed while also meeting third-party requirements, law and regulation.

Sitemorse Sitemorse's Web Managers Toolkit was developed so writers and editors not necessarily skilled in writing HTML code could keep control of their sites from the outset. The tool works with any of the content management systems currently on the market and can be used to audit or test any web pages in development - whether they are on an internal development site or the internet itself.

At the development stage of a website, it can be easy for any developer to lose sight of the end product. Sitemorse provides a series of proven solutions to assist developers at each and every stage in the site building process Sitemorse CMS Integration (SCI) sits in your content management system; after you complete the page, we run our full suite of tests, checks and measures to verify your content is ready for the public. This includes checking that any email addresses and links are valid and work, and we can validate against specific brand rules and make you aware of any accessibility problems that exist on a new page.

Another great advantage of Sitemorse is that it works on external servers with nothing to download, so can be used alongside many different content management systems. Sitemorse looks at your site from the outside, rather than the inside, like your CMS, and can spot errors it fails to find.

OK - with nearly three full months to Christmas, we must be mad talking about the C-word already, but if you're a shopkeeper, the need for planning means that now is the time to be getting ready.

That's why you'll find many high street retailers have sneakily started  to display stuffed reindeer and turkey trimmings at the back of their stores, even as the last dregs of Indian Summer has had us all sweltering over the last couple of weeks.

Online retailers had the best-ever Christmas last year, believe it or not, right in the middle of the worst recession of a generation, with more than 2.1 billion UK visits to retail websites, and 44% of Britain's online adult population spending a total of £2.8bn in internet purchases.

So, E-retailers, now's the time to think about a pre-Christmas website health check from Sitemorse.

A staggering 22 per cent of web users say they have not been able to complete purchases because of technical problems with websites, according to recent research, and that must mean an enormous amount of lost sales because of duff links, bad code and sites that are still, despite changes in the law, inaccessible to disabled users who make up a solid percentage of prospective online buyers.

Our most recent retail survey in September covering the 250 top global companies found still only a handful have error-free sites and standards actually appeared to have dropped since the previous survey three months before. 

The start of the appearance of malware and phishing links in retail websites seem to indicate they are not being looked after properly by their owners - and that may mean the retailers involved will be paying via their cash registers for any neglect and consequential lost sales come Christmas Day.

Sitemorse offers independent, authoritative and accountable software to ensure the quality, compliance, performance, availability and compatibility of your web estate. Delivered as a web service , it not require any client setup or management, so retailers can swiftly be assured that their sites are ready to handle the high pre-Christmas traffic of the next few months.

You might be interested to read our recent retail surveys of the Global Top 250 companies and the UK retail top 500. And if you're a retailer wondering how much time you have to start improving your web presence, you might like this blog from Simon Heyes at Internet Retailing.

We are delighted to see Facebook is to offer users some protection against malware and scammers and from next week users will be warned if they are about to click on a link to a malicious website. Such tactics can often trick users into sharing passwords or confidential information.

Sitemorse has been warning against the dangers of 'phishing' and malware for some time, and the threat has grown so that these malicious links are starting to creep into otherwise innocent corporate sites. The web is a very changeable picture, and what your company links to today could be changed tomorrow .

Next month we will be launching a new 'every page' link checking and report service - this is an upgrade which will available to all subscription clients, at no charge.

The service will run once a week and clients will be emailed a link to the online results and a PDF summarising the links, identifying those with issues and tracking improvements compared with previous reports and a rolling 3 month average.Along with looking at every link and building a link inventory, each link will also be checked against known malicious sites.

We are also planning an 'iPhone app', delivering weekly push notifications that identify the key links not working or those that are linking out to phishing or malware sites.

Sitemorse subscription clients will soon be getting an upgrade that will mean all their web pages will be checked every week - and each link will be checked against known phishing and malware sites.

We are also working on an 'iPhone app', delivering weekly notifications that identify the key links that need to be looked at - be it those links that are not working or those that are linking out to phishing / malware sites.

Read more about this new free service or email us for details - sales@Sitemorse.com.

Sitemorse has made its innovative snapshot tool available to all, so any user can now carry out a quick website audit.

Snapshot allows you a test a page whilst looking at it on the screen. Snapshot ensures you have no 'unwanted' cookies, large files or broken links, no brand or spelling issues, and that vital features such as email addresses work.For many developers, Sitemorse has now become part of their standard set of tools.

No software download is necessary - Snapshot works within any browser and involves nothing more than visiting a page and clicking the 'bookmarklet'. The page is then rebuilt on screen, with the addition of a top 'button bar' with coloured icons providing an easy to understand guide as to how the page has performed under vital areas such as function, code quality, and accessibility.

Snapshot is part of Sitemorse's suite of web governance tools - try it for yourself and go to https://snapshot.sitemorse.com/. To find out more give us a call on 020 7183 5588.

A job ad that ended with the words "Usual rubbish about equal opportunities employer etc" had staff at a Liverpool Hospital trust in hot water this week - and it may have caused a few smiles, but surely also major headaches for those involved.

With the best will in the world, managing content of websites can be an enormous task and human nature often allows errors - in this case clearly 'draft' content - to be published online for the world to see. 

The story about the Broadgreen University Hospital's website was carried by the BBC this week and chimes with the latest chapter in the way Sitemorse can help with website governance.

The Sitemorse ' Engine' can be used to search for 'banned' content, even for  poor spelling, as part of the  production process, providing alerts that can help overworked managers avoid this kind of problem.

The hospital trust has launched an enquiry into how the offending content - which has since been removed - was published and had to put out a lengthy statement around its commitment to equal opportunities.

Some of the UK's best-known Police forces have the poorest quality websites, according to the latest Sitemorse survey of UK forces.

For the third survey in a row Cleveland Police have been 'Top of the Cops' , scoring nearly top marks for function, accessibility, code quality and performance

But the real story is the rank of familiar names - including Merseyside, Greater Manchester, and West Yorkshire - languishing at the bottom of the table. The independent Police Complaints Commission website was third from bottom of the table. Since one of the things the sites failed on - having no access for disabled people using the web - is actually illegal under UK law, you could say "well, well officer, come quietly now, here's the evidence, you're nicked" - before slamming the cell door firmly shut.

A browser-based solution to the latest change to the law on cookies is unlikely to work, according to Sitemorse.

We have partnered with solicitors Field Fisher Waterhouse to launch an innovative solution to the new EU law affecting every organisation's website, and we think the UK government and others looking for ways to implement the new law could be barking up the wrong tree.

Cookies are small bits of data which reside on a web server. Among other things they are used to track the buying experience of web users on e-commerce websites.

The EU directive - designed to maintain the privacy of users - became law at the end of May and says that users should give consent to cookies. This is a headache for companies because few know exactly what cookies are in place on their websites.

It has been reported that the UK government is working with browser manufacturers to create new settings allowing users to say yes or no to cookies on sites they visit. If possible, this could solve a headache for the many organisations wrestling to get to grips with the hidden information already on their sites.

"It seems like a nice idea" said Sitemorse CEO Lawrence Shaw. "but we think it is flawed reasoning. It could work perfectly well for a reasonably experienced user accessing a website on their own computer, at home say. But what about when they are abroad, in a cybercafé, in someone else's office? On many company computers browser settings are fixed for security reasons, so in reality this sort of solution may not work".

The second issue is the sheer number of browsers that are in use today (estimated to be more than 100, with some providers supporting many versions). The issue can then be yet further complicated by the actual device type that is in use - often the settings to delete the cookies and website 'cache' can be different by device type.

Sitemorse and Field Fisher Waterhouse, a prestigious European law firm with a particular focus on companies that are highly regulated and those with intellectual property and technology driven business models, have developed the new Cookie Audit and Advisory Service to tackle the combined technical and legal challenges that businesses face in cataloguing existing cookie use and determining appropriate user transparency and consent strategies.

The Cookie Audit and Advisory Service offers a three-stage review for businesses trying to identify and put in place comprehensive and transparent consent strategies. Initially, Sitemorse will use our SaaS web content governance tools to undertake an extensive review of the website domain and identify the cookies and other tracking devices served through it.

Field Fisher Waterhouse's privacy specialists will then review the potential intrusiveness of those cookies under European privacy law and guidance. Finally, Sitemorse and Field Fisher Waterhouse will recommend appropriate transparency and consent strategies, tailored to meet their clients' specific commercial and technical constraints.

"This isn't just a one-off, quick fix," said Shaw. "Websites evolve over time, and so do their use of cookies. It can be very difficult just keeping track of what is served through your site, where and for what reason, let alone assessing how intrusive those cookies are and what disclosures and consents are required. That's why our solution also offers ongoing 24 x 7 cookie monitoring and will report when new cookies are deployed or used outside agreed permissions. This enables businesses to really manage their forward-facing website compliance in a simple, effective manner."

Sitemorse is all about building your Web Confidence - and an important part of the latest version of our software is around web security and giving you the confidence to know you're not unwittingly linking to dangerous sites or 'malware'.

There were red faces in high places recently when a government-backed website designed to champion UK's start-up businesses inadvertently linked users to malware, according to security firm Sophos and the BBC.

Soaring malware loads and social networking scams were described as 'concerning' by Cisco in the company's latest Global Threat. Cisco collected more than 105,000 unique malware samples in March, showing a sharp rise over the previous quarter and a 46 per cent rise since January.

At Sitemorse, our job is to make you aware of dependencies, compliance issues and risks. While 'phishing 'and malware links are not always the work of a malicious agent (we found at least one client recently linking to a 'suspect' site inadvertently by mistyping a web address), these 'dodgy' sites try hard to mimic their genuine counterpart in the appearance of the URL.

Here's areas where you might need our help:

• When you embed code to third party websites in your pages (for example, links via advertising banners), you are relying on the third party being responsible for their own security. Suppose the target site that the banner link takes you to were to be replaced with a link to a malicious piece of software, seemingly carrying your seal of approval?

• Not all website owners have the time and resources to moderate user comments to blog articles or in community areas. Should a link to malware or a phishing website creep in, our tools can immediately alert you to the problem.

Our software guards you in the following ways:

• If we find links to a page that are suspected to lead to a phishing or malware address, or links to a known staging server, we will publish the details on the 'Site Links Inventory and Review' page inside your Version 7 Sitemorse report.

• This is a comprehensive page grouping links by their hostname (the web address), as well as identifying new links that have not been encountered before, links that were listed in the previous report and finally, links we found in the previous report that we did not find this time.

• For links suspected of being phishing and malware we provide the key information you need - including the line in the code that each link appeared and a link to Snapshot to view the page as it was when we tested it.

Using this information you can quickly see which external sites you are dependent upon. To make it even easier we list the links to external sites in three categories: those that are links to sub domains of the URL we ran the test on, those that use a name or URL that is similar to that of your site, and finally, all other external links outside of your domain or organisation.

How does the Sitemorse Version 7 software do it?

• As we scan your site, we run each and every off-site link against the Google Safe Browsing database. This list is used by Firefox and Google Chrome to protect millions of users every day from suspected phishing and malware pages. Our own cache is continually updated from Google so that it always contains the very latest known phishing and malware sites.

• To detect links to staging servers we compare each off-site link with those on a list of known staging and development servers; this list is also kept up-to-date and personalised - we will ask for a list of your internal server URLs during the implementation of your service.

UK consumers buy most and spend most on-line and on-line shopping is the second most popular activity undertaken on-line across the UK, France, Germany and Italy. But data from Mediascope Europe show that this masks significant variations in behaviour between consumers in these countries. The data show that consumers in the UK made more than double the number of on-line purchases in the past six months (19) than consumers in any other major European country except Poland (14).

In addition, the total value of on-line purchases made in the past six months was highest in the UK (£1031). This was nearly double the amount spent by consumers in the next-placed country, Germany (£595).

So the UK is a great place to have an on-line retail presence.

Which means there's plenty of competition so if your site disappoints your visitors in anyway that competition is just a click away.