Before you start congratulating yourself on your company's new Internet website, take a look at the latest survey in Business Week magazine. True, cybershoppers can avoid the crowds, but the merchants have a long way to go to make their virtual shops attractive.

All of the 239 people surveyed had shopped on the Web at least once in the past 60 days, 35 per cent of them more than 10 times. But that's still far less than the several times a day that most people shop for or buy something.

Some 28 per cent of respondents overall found it at least somewhat difficult to find the product they wanted to buy, and only 8 per cent found it very easy. Some 62 per cent gave up looking for a product at least once, and of those, 34 per cent then bought the item at a real shop or from a catalogue.