Track 22, part a

A: OK, this brings us on to the next item on our agenda this morning, which is online business. Now, I know some of you are concerned about the recent performance of E-Stock, our online subsidiary. So I’ve asked Gary Cale, our new head of e-business, to bring us up to date. Over to you, Gary.

B: Thanks, Michelle. To start off, then, I know you have all seen the figures up to the last quarter – disappointing to say the least. Nine months ago, when we first went online, we were getting over 250,000 hits a day. Three months ago, when I joined [bad word]  we were getting just 60,000 and it was obvious we were failing to attract sufficient customers to our website. So, what was going wrong? In a word, technology. The problem was not the service we were offering, but the website itself.