Corp sites should aim for this honour list

Ever wanted to know which corporate websites make the cut? The main criteria is whether it sends across a positive message about the company through the design, construction, functionality built into it, or not. But it's also a lot about attracting the attention of investors, customers, the media and jobseekers - or else why put up a website in the first place?

Bowen Craggs, are UK-based web effectiveness experts - with a classy but a tad spare looking site of their own. They have compiled a list of 75 companies' sites that are worth looking at, from around the globe. Their initial parameter was just taking into consideration the market capitalisation of the firm but they have ranked these sites under other categories as well, such as: site construction, on whether it is serving the media, serving investors, serving jobseekers, serving society, serving customers etc.

For instance: The top sites that improved their construction were BP, Procter & Gamble, Sanofi-Aventis, Royal Dutch Shell, Unilever, Intel, Novartis, WalMart Stores, British American Tobacco and GlaxoSmithKline. (See table below)

The Top 10 sites according to some of the Bowen Craggs metrics


Click on the image to enlarge it

On whether these sites have embraced social media in a big way, this is what the report said: "We classified 22 of the Index’s 75 sites as ‘social media friendly’. IT companies have a natural community of experts, so can easily exploit the social side –see Cisco’s Newsroom for how far that can go. Elsewhere, most companies limit themselves to displays of networking and bookmarking icons plus, perhaps, some Twitter feeds.

Deeper integration of site and social media is concentrated in careers, where Facebook’s demographic makes it a no-brainer. Otherwise, spot Siemens’ brave decision to show how many social media comments have been posted about its home page videos and Walmart Stores’ coverage of social media channels by its search engine. This last may be the most significant sign of all – let’s see if others follow."

So, does your business site send out the right message, and does it reflect well on your skills - social media and otherwise? The sad fact is that, the only Indian site to get on this list is Reliance Industries - and it is dragging along in the bottom five of the list, on all the criteria taken into consideration.

Besides Reliance Industries, there are any number of Indian corporates whose websites could do with a makeover. Read this report to begin to know how to do it right.

Click here for the entire list in detail: http://www.bowencraggs.com/ftindex/indices

Read the full report here: http://bowencraggs.com/downloads/ft/BC_FTIndex_2011_booklet.pdf