Dell: Close but no cigar

First, let’s consider Dell’s app (which runs on both iPhone and iPad), which delivers the broadest range of capabilities. The ability to browse and buy Dell products. Check orders. View classic support content and (drum roll please) access a nice assortment of support videos.

Given all of these goodies, you’d think the Dell mobile app would be a slam dunk. You’d be wrong.  The culprit? A design and interface that is, well, embarrassing.  I’m thinking a skunk works run amok. Clunky, clumsy, clueless, and certainly not up to Dell’s online brand.

Newegg does it better

If a great design and savvy interface are your cup of tea, Newegg’s app sets the standards. Great design. Crisp images. Perfect look and feel. Add easy to use—and this app hits all of the marks. Product details, reviews, return policies, and fast paths to similar products. The shopping cart and check out processes are works of art.

On the other hand, if you want mobile support, you’re out of luck. Newegg’s app is for browsing and buying. If your product is broken, you’ll have to go somewhere else.

Cisco gets it — again

Since mobile support is part of Dell’s iPad app DNA, I decided to see what’s up on the iPad support front. Cisco’s iPad support app (launched last March) is a great example of this new genre. Like Newegg, Cisco.com read the memo on the importance of a crisp design and great interface—and the app’s content architecture and features are also first rate. If developing an iPad support app is on your dance card, this should be at the top of your “inspiration” list.

So there you have it. Dell’s iPad app covers most of the bases, and Newegg and Cisco end up hitting all of the home runs.

I’m putting the final touches on a new case study which will hit the Library this week. If you are a subscriber, look for an alert in your email. If you aren’t a member of the family, you can learn more about the Case Studies Library here.

So much for conventional wisdom.

For the most part, I’d rather have a root canal than use most support Websites.

Search for information and you end up with a list of a bazillion documents with truncated descriptions that read like Sanskrit.

Want to take a different path? Try ferreting your product out of a laundry list of every product the company ever made.

Or try the “follow our logical links” scenario—where you end up drilling to China.

At the end of all of this wonderfulness is the real insult. Support content that either requires an engineering degree to understand—or a wad of general purpose instructions that dance around the problem and miss the issue by a country mile.

Finally, don’t get me started about most site’s support program content. (You know, the stuff that explains why you have to pay to play.)  First, you can’t find it. When you do, it’s packed with so many superlatives you need a dictionary to figure it out.

Honestly, you’d think support teams would get it after doodling on the Web for 16 years.

Drum Roll, Please

Given my opinion of support on the Web, I was surprised how much the 2011 support evaluations reflected my opinions of these support sites. Most of the sites we evaluated deliver half of the content, features & capabilities deployed on best-in-class support sites. With the exception of four sites—Cisco.com, Symantec.com, IBM.com and the IBM Software Group site—every site’s usability misses the Good Practice mark.

I’d probably throw a bone to Dell.com, EMC.com, and Microsoft.com for coming close—but the rest are simply not up to snuff.

I’ve just finished putting the finishing touches on our new 2011 online support rankings and ratings report which published today. Here’s some of the more interesting things in this new report.

IBM, Dell and HP have all the goodies

IBM.com’s, Dell.com’s and HP.com’s monster-size support sites handed them the top rankings this year. If you want to create a world-class support size packed with every bell and whistle, you don’t have to look much further than here. Among the players, Dell.com is the biggest, but IBM.com puts its goodies together to better effect (its usability ranks third; Dell.com ranks fifth).

This brings me to the real tail that wags the dog.

Cisco.com proves an important point

When usability is the issue, we’ve always said that small can be mighty—and Cisco.com proves the point. Cisco.com’s support site took first place usability honors—which is a testament to all of the hard work we’ve seen on the site this year. If you are a siteIntelligence Case Studies Library subscriber, you can see Cisco.com’s best-in-class innovations here: https://siteiq.centraldesktop.com/sirc/blog/1088332/view/bytag/cisco (Category: support, Tag: cisco). (Have your login info handy).

From a usability perspective, Cisco.com has the most complete roster of support information that is easy to find. To see why, take Cisco.com’s site search engine for a spin and pay attention to post search filtering capabilities. Then check out the support zone’s fly-out navigational panel. If you want to learn why these matter, check out Cisco.com’s best practice case studies here: https://siteiq.centraldesktop.com/sirc/blog/1088332/view/bytag/cisco. (You guessed it: subscription & login required.)

Finding support content on most sites is a "Where's Waldo?" moment. Only 5 sites hit the mark.

Not so fast. The winners should cancel their victory lap.

So where are the pleasant surprises? Put Brocade.com, EMC.com, and Symantec.com on that list.

• Brocade.com has the most complete & thorough support program information (a Best Practice) -– and does the best job of encouraging visitors to take the next step.
• EMC.com’s support program information is easier to find—and does the best job of providing program contact information.
• Symantec.com delivers the best support click streams, which generated the highest Good Practice rating for all of its hard work.

And what about the rest of the pack? You know, those other 13 support Websites on the evaluation list?  Let’s just say there was another interesting surprise.

Earth to enterprise: what are you thinking?

With the exception of IBM Software Group, enterprise software sites need to up their usability game. From my perspective, their rankings are downright embarrassing.

CA.com ranks 11^th, Oracle.com ranks 12^th and SAP.com brings up the back of the pack in 15^th place. The only support sites that are worse than these triplets are reseller sites (CDW.com, Insight.com and Newegg.com) –and they don’t provide much, if any, support on their sites. Yikes!

So how does IBM Software Group stay out of this industry ditch? IBM.com’s highly integrated support portal is the wind beneath its wings. To see why this portal delivers a bit of online support nirvana, check out our case study in the Library: https://siteiq.centraldesktop.com/sirc/blogentry/5334686/. (Yep, you’ll need that pesky login information).

Dell.com support is really a tale of two cities.

Finally, no analysis is complete without taking a look at the conventional wisdom corner; in this case the prevailing belief that Dell.com operates the biggest and best online support site. This may (or may not) be true behind the Dell Premier firewall—but it’s a mixed bag if you are on the public side of the equation.

When the numbers are rolled up, Dell.com’s support zone’s content, features & capabilities rank #1, but its usability slips into fifth place–right behind the IBM Software Group site. As important, it only ranks first in one out of ten usability categories (a Good Practice for support zone logic). Other than that, Dell.com persistently ranks in second and third place.

The bottom line

So there you have it. The roster of winners based on 138 things support sites should provide–plus ten ways they should help users achieve their objectives. For the top five, I send hardy congratulations. For the rest of the pack, roll up your sleeves. There’s lots of work ahead.

Fair warning, this post is long!

IBM.com has launched revised home and solutions pages that feature the next major piece in its evolution: a new take on mega-menus. Not surprisingly, IBM.com has put its own spin on what is fast becoming an industry norm. In this Don’t Miss/Don’t Bother we weigh in on the pros and cons of IBM.com’s latest design.

Marty | Neutral (with a qualified Don’t Bother)

One thing that’s sure about IBM: it always marches to the tune of its own drummer. That’s why I wasn’t really surprised when IBM.com launched its own rendition of the mega-menu.  With browser in hand, I took it for a spin.

After putting it through its paces, I’m essentially neutral about this evolution.

On the plus side, it’s lighting fast and creates a slick first impression. By using the whole page width, it makes maximum use of page real estate. This, in turn, makes it easier to handle those pesky stakeholders who insist on having their little piece of heaven on the global nav. It’s also a design optimized for companies with huge product and services portfolios.  Clearly IBM fits that bill.

So why am I neutral?  Let me count three ways.

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. There’s an old saw that nature abhors a vacuum—and the Web is no exception. Take IBM.com’s mega-menu real estate for example. Although a savvy design makes this menu look manageable at first blush, it is actually packed with 145 links spread across 5 main category tabs. The Solutions and Products tabs are the whoppers in the family, weighing in at 36 and 37 links respectively. Fortunately, the Solutions menu is listed in alphabetical order. I guess the “Products” tab owners missed the class on how to do A-Z categorization.

To be fair, there is no doubt that IBM.com’s new mega-menus are pencil slim if compared to the 200+ links buried in its older fly-out menus. But that doesn’t mean that progress should be measured in a best practice vacuum.

Here, consider two other mega-menu powerhouses with the same general tab layout: Cisco.com and Juniper.net.  Cisco.com’s mega menus clock in with 60 total links; roughly half of them (28) are on its new support mega menu (which qualifies as a new best practice and the industry’s first mega menu workhorse, read more here).  Meanwhile, Juniper.net weighs in at a very svelte 44 links.

As important, both of these sites visually break up their lists of links using asymmetrical layouts (Juniper.net) and, in the case of Cisco.com, additional visual cues that make it easy to spy and select the right links.

So what’s the point?  Simple. Finding and acting on a navigation decision is much faster and easier on the Cisco.com and Juniper.net sites.

When Mr. Magoo is you. Although most users will find the navigation panel easy to read, those in front of larger, high resolution screens are sure to have Mr. Magoo moments. One culprit is IBM’s decision to present links in a medium gray color—which is intended to provide a clear contrast as a link turns white when touched by a mouse. In practical use, this means that the Mr. Magoo crowd will end up mousing over every link in the lists until the correct one lights up. A beautiful design point, to be sure, but not one optimized for those of us whose arms aren’t quite long enough anymore. (If you don’t understand the reference, go ask your Mom).

On the plus side, I’m glad to report that viewing this new design on an iPad is a perfect user experience.  The font is an ideal size and the links work well with the touch of a finger. At the other end of the spectrum, don’t even get me started about the experience on a smartphone.

The law of unintended consequences. Everyone who works on the Web knows about the law of unintended consequences. The day the Oracle Technology Network site hijacked the Oracle.com home page (schwoops!). The year that Cisco’s IT organization redesigned and launched a new site—which created such an uproar that it had to provide a side link to the old site and ended up hiring a professional Website team (there’s a lesson here).

IBM.com’s marriage between its scrolling mega-menu and its F1 feature is just such an “unintended consequences” moment.

Simply put, users who happen to be moving to a menu on the right at the precise time that the F1 feature is cycling to the left are likely to have something akin to an out-of-body experience. Since a moving picture’s worth a thousand words, I’ve loaded a video of this experience into our Case Study Library. Just to let you know, a preemptive dose of Dramamine is strongly recommended.

So what does this mean in practical application?  Simple. If you plan to follow in IBM.com’s footsteps it’s a good idea to settle on static F1’s or a design that allows users to manually step through multiple features on the page. Combine automatic features and moving navigation willy nilly and you’ll need to hand out air sick bags.

Of course there’s plenty of other pros and cons associated with this new mega-menu launch—including why following IBM.com’s lead will require a design commitment well beyond your home page and why this is likely to be an unpopular decision with stakeholders.  For many companies facing limited budgets, marginal executive sponsorship, and a sea of cranky stakeholders, IBM.com’s gambit qualifies as a nasty rabbit hole you might want to avoid and thus, a Don’t Bother moment.

I’ve outlined these and other issues in my new case study which is available in the siteIntelligence Case Studies Library. If you are a subscriber, click here (you’ll need your log in credentials; Dramamine is highly recommended). If you are not a subscriber you don’t need Dramamine – and can learn more about this service here.

Kenna Dian | Don’t Bother

I have been using IBM.com’s new mega-menu design for a week now—opening it, closing it, spinning it, reading it. But after poking and prodding it every way possible I am only left with one question: where’s the added value?

If the purpose of a mega-menu is to display more navigation links using a larger panel, then IBM has hit the jackpot. But that is only one measly piece of a much larger puzzle. Mega-menus are also supposed to make a site’s global navigation easier for visitors to use. This is a much bigger job—and one where IBM misses the mark by a country mile.

IMHO, here’s why.

First, each panel is a blizzard of navigation links. Each menu is completely devoid of any design elements that would help users visually separate one category from another. In practical use, you end up scrutinizing each link to find the one you need, which is about as much fun as reading the white pages. Usability challenge: scannability.

Second, the topic headers are hot—or maybe not. After wandering through these menus for 4 days, Marty finally let me in on the secret: the yellow headers are actually links. Funny, I was wondering why some headers got to play on the “A” team (yellow font) while the others seemed to be permanently benched (grey font). I still don’t know the answer (but I can guess). Usability challenges: scannability (again), breaking your own convention, and category confusion.

Third, the categories in the global navigation bar aren’t linked to a top level page; their sole purpose is to open the navigation menu. Visitors who want to see all of IBM’s solutions, products, or services must hunt down the “all [insert site area]” link hidden in the blizzard of links. Oh, and support? Forget it. There is no “all” link in this panel. Bottom line, customers must know their destination or be in the know about the yellow header trick. Usability challenges: scannability (yet again), confusion, and inept zone access.

Fourth, visitors have to click on a link in the global navigation bar to open the panel, but if they let their pointer slip, this panel it will slap shut faster than a thousand pound door. This not only violates the current “click to open, click to close” convention; it also creates a rousing game of “now you see it, now you don’t” while the visitor figures out how to drive the menu. Usability challenges: common conventions, missed expectations, and general confusion (again).

From one perspective, I could argue that these issues are first experience nits that regular users will learn to work around. That might be true. But then there’s my final gripe.

Sometimes the IBM.com home page behaves like a Whirling Dervish. Here, the culprit is the marriage between the page’s navigation panel and the F1 feature. Select a panel to the right while the feature graphic is doing its thing and you’ll feel like you’ve ended up in a Tea Cup at Disneyland. Here, I agree with Marty. It’s a good idea to have Dramamine in your Web surfing kit. Usability challenges: breaking common conventions (again) and too many moving parts.

In the final analysis, I want to like IBM.com’s new mega-menu. I really, really do. But, every time I take it for a (open, read, close) spin I wonder what value I’m getting for all the work, time, and effort it takes to get what I need and go where I want to go. For this reason, I have to give IBM.com’s new mega-menu a reluctant Don’t Bother rating. Think of it as an opportunity for other sites to learn from IBM.com and do it better.

Other Stuff to Do:

Read how Cisco.com’s Support mega-menu raises the bar—again

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Kenna Dian | Don’t Bother

I have been watching the latest HP.com home page launch for the last three weeks with great interest—waiting to see how the new home page design would shake out. But after all this time, I am left wondering what on earth HP.com thinks it’s doing.

A short history. The cycle started about three weeks ago with a new home page, which suddenly disappeared the next day. Next, it appeared again in a rotation with the old home page. Within a week, there were 3 versions of the home page—then 4—and now we’re up to at least 5. Add two animated versions that show the visitor how to use the home page’s feature panels and navigation—and you have the whole picture.

I don’t know if HP.com will eventually settle on something—or will continue playing Russian roulette with its home page. But I do know that I’ve learned four things watching this…um…unique launch.

1. If you need to teach me how to use your home page—it’s broken. The site is currently running two versions that demonstrate how the home page works—which is a huge clue that one or more design points aren’t faring well with visitors.  My POV? If you have to demo your home page, it’s time to go back to the drawing board.
2. French Canadians are apparently dumber than the rest of the world. To see if other geos were getting the same home page launch treatment, I decided to take a trip around the world. Everyone is equal…sort of.  The U.S. got the new, static home page roughly 80% of the time. Europe got the animated demo versions first 99% of the time. After that, they got the new, static design. The Canadian—French site, however, got the demo version 2 to 3 times before the new static home page design kicked in. Sorry Quebec—looks like it’s the back of the class for you.
3. They’re watching you—or maybe not. After twenty or more visits to the HP.com site over three weeks, the site finally locked me out of its home page Olympics. Only the old home page for me. So I switched to Internet Explorer.  IE’s first page load made me wonder if my browsers were in collusion. The old home page started to load and then the site stopped and switched to the new (static) home page. I guess my reputation really does precede me.
4. A/B testing isn’t supposed to require the alphabet. I can’t quite get my head around why HP.com would use its Website visitors to bounce through 5 or more designs to see what sticks. I have to assume that there was a user testing budget in the plan—and that A/B testing was part of the mix. But 5 renditions and two demo pages for air cover? Come on guys. Next time, spend more time in the user testing lab. Your visitors are your buyers–not lab rats.

My siteIQ View | This botched launch has effectively announced that the new home page is only marginally effective, but misses the usability mark. In this world, the fix doesn’t lie in teaching visitors how to use the home page. It lies in accepting that something is seriously broken.

My message to HP—man, let it go. At this point, this approach is doing more harm than good—for HP and for the new design. It’s time to choose a design and move on—even if it’s the old one.

I’ve just posted a new “Tips & Traps” best practice case study and video that focuses on why the KISS principle would work better for HP.com. Subscribers can pick it up in the siteIntelligence Case Studies Library here (you’ll need your log in credentials).

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Marty Gruhn | Don’t Bother

I have to go with you on this one Kenna. Like you, I never quite knew what to expect when I landed on HP.com. The old page. The new page. A different new page. A demo page. A page that doesn’t work. Honestly, it’s been like watching a schizophrenic at a cocktail party. Fascinating to be sure, but ultimately a train wreck in slow motion.

But that’s not why I call this a Don’t Bother. My call is based on what happens when you move beyond the magic curtain.

Talk about a fractured user experience. Select one product family and you’ll be treated to a Madison Avenue rendition of pretty pictures, prose, and plenty of pomp and circumstance. Select another, and you’ll be unceremoniously dumped onto pages that haven’t seen a design change since 2006 (and that’s probably a gift). In this case, the home page accurately describes the reality down below.

And don’t even get me started about the navigation. It’s on the top. The bottom. The side. Sometimes it’s actually invisible. It’s like trying to drive a car with a different stick shift on every bumper.

And then there’s the cardinal sin I’m seeing more and more these days. Agency driven marketing campaigns that grab your attention with snappy phrases, but never make the connection to the right products.

A great example was HP.com’s “organized mom” feature which dumped me onto the consumer store’s home page. Not sure which product in the blizzard of options was supposed to get me organized. Big surprise. I left without dropping a dime.

These and other behaviors are clobbering HP.com and a ton of other Websites—and making some important usability scores tank. Consider some of HP.com’s new scores (download a free copy of HP.com Usability Snapshot), which are hot off the press. Innovation and interactivity are roughly on par with close competitors, but consistency, navigation, and site logic are all systemic challenges.  Spend a little quality time on this site and you’ll see why.

My siteIQ View | I hate to fault HP.com for pushing on the envelope. It’s fun to be the coolest, the hippest and happenin’ digital brand. It’s also easy to believe that edgy designs and behaviors set new standards. Create a competitive advantage. Move buyers into the checkout line.

Unfortunately, history teaches something very different. Sustainable, best practice trendsetters are a sober bunch. They are incremental performers. They know how to smooth around the edges—and then layer innovative designs.

Most importantly, they studiously avoid committing the ultimate cardinal sin: assaulting visitors with behaviors that fracture the user experience and persistently break the brand. Hard to believe, but that seems to be a lesson that HP.com has yet to learn.

Each of the case studies focuses on a different design or content best practice—but for my money, the “cult of personality” discussion is a compelling moment of brilliance. It looks like the IBM Smarter Planet team has actually cracked the code on how to marry social media behaviors with the company’s core business propositions. Here’s a thirty second summary of Kenna’s POV.

For the bulk of its 100 years, IBM has been the icon of the monolithic, faceless organization. The Machine. The Man. The System. This reputation was so entrenched that is employees were endowed with a unique nickname: “the blue suits”. Thus, it’s surprising – no shocking – that IBM should be the first company to successfully transform itself from a corporation into a clan. And its Website is playing no small role in its metamorphosis.

The strategy is brilliant because

• It leverages IBM’s core sales model (building relationships), gives it the golden opportunity to demonstrate expertise and passion, and translates a faceless corporation into actual people who are experts in their fields.
• It works by using photos, dynamic profiles, and links to start conversations.
• It wraps these attributes in a savvy design that takes advantage of new less is more white space trends and short, snappy & relevant content that is second to none.

And then there are the graphics. Relevant charts with factoids. Eye catching video panels. Moments of visual whimsy and delight (my favorite is the carrot that illustrates how long it takes to get from the farm to a store in California). This from that old stuffy IBM?

Library subscribers can read more about how and why this site works, view a video, and download these case studies at http://bit.ly/eOMKjU. Have your log in credentials handy—or contact us if you’ve forgotten them.

Last month Cisco released the latest evolution of Cisco.com, and the results are nothing short of amazing. Visitors taking a quick spin around top levels of the site will notice obvious improvements. The introduction of a more vibrant color palette. Updated page layouts. A new toolbar at the bottom of the page. And, some tweaks to its best-in-class mega-menu. But these enhancements, while nice, aren’t what make this redesign a step above the rest. The things that make the difference are far more subtle.

Design

Increased white space. Cisco.com has injected additional space around everything—content panels, images, headers, text, navigation panels—everything.  Benefit: Visitors can scan pages more quickly and easily.

Smarter use of imagery. Cisco.com has always displayed some of the most eye-catching photos of any IT Website, and was pretty savvy about using them. This time around, however, there seems to be fewer of them, and each and every one has a reason to be there. Benefits: Visitors can intuit feature content topics, navigation categories, and target audiences without reading a single word on the page.

Navigation and Architecture

All audiences receive equal billing. When most people think Cisco, they think products for enterprise companies. But Cisco also offers products and support for the SMB and Home/Home Office crowd. The latest redesign makes this more obvious than ever before. The global mega-menu provides separate navigation tabs for Enterprise, SMB, and Home audiences. And visitors who missed them there will find them at the bottom of all site pages, and often on second (and sometimes even lower) level pages. Cisco.com’s smart use of tab-top designs and compact navigation styles also makes access to other audience areas easy without taking up much space. Benefits: It informs SMB and Home/Home Office visitors that Cisco.com serves more than just Enterprise companies. It quickly redirects visitors that have wandered off track back to the site areas that best fits their needs. And, it provides greater visibility of all Cisco products—not just those for the Enterprise set.

The “Solutions” navigators are gone, but solutions-class content is not forgotten. Navigation to murky “Solutions” marketing is gone. But this doesn’t mean that visitors won’t get solutions-class content. Now these messages are artfully woven throughout the product and services marketing click streams and content. Benefits: Visitors intuitively identify Cisco’s products and services as solutions to their needs.  Also, visitors understand Cisco’s offerings quicker since solutions and product marketing content is integrated into a single click stream.

Improved “snacking” architecture. The former Cisco.com Website displayed some traits of the highly-effective “snacking” architecture. However, an  over-abundance of page content and navigational options often negated the benefits this approach provides. Cisco.com’s latest redesign has put page content on a strict diet, making the “snacking” architecture really shine. Benefit: Visitors digest even large amounts of content more effectively since it is delivered in bite-size pieces throughout the site.

Content

The content is shorter, crisper, and easier to read. The previous version of the Cisco.com Website seemed stuck in the trap most IT Websites find themselves in—it talked too much. The content was too long, extremely dense, listed too many benefits, and was often delivered in a single page of prose.  Not anymore. Content on the new Cisco.com is more focused, crisply written, and talks directly to the reader. Benefit: Visitors absorb marketing messages because they stay engaged while reading the content.

The content is delivered in small chunks. Cisco.com has been breaking up its content little by little over the last 12 months. But the latest site redesign really breaks it down. Marketing click streams now deliver shorter bits of content across multiple pages. Meanwhile, some product marketing pages distribute content by topic on the same page using tab-top navigation. Benefits: Visitors can experience a unique marketing message by choosing the information that interests them. Executives and managers can explore content that addresses how Cisco’s products address their business challenges, without wading through technical specifications. Conversely, Network Administrators can dig into the technical specifications by bypassing solutions-class content.

I was surprised at the IBM Software Group zone’s performance in our latest siteIQ evaluations. Once upon a time, this site ranked first among all enterprise software comers by virtue of its huge portfolio of content & features, and competitive usability scores.

Fade out two years later and the story is much different. This site dropped to third among the 5 enterprise software sites we study and stands in 11^th place on the siteIQ eBusiness Index. (You can download a free IBM Software Group scoring summary here).

Today, CA.com and Oracle.com are the sites to watch. Between the two, I vote for CA.com. Beyond some stabs at Web 2.0 behaviors, Oracle.com’s design and content needle hasn’t moved a whit over the past two years. CA.com, on the other hand, recently launched a brand new site with a blizzard of bells and whistles. It’s worth a tour to see the site’s highly efficient product marketing click streams.

There are many reasons for IBM Software Group’s slide down the rankings. For starters, industry marketing ranks last among competitors; CA.com hands it its head in services marketing; and search features are inadequate to the task (ranks fourth).

And what does the IBM Software Group site do well? At the top of the list is the site’s integrated support portal, which is the best in the business, hands down. This site also has the best call to action behaviors in the form of consistent and persistent contact modules on almost every page. Generally, the site’s usability performs in the Good Practice range.

The Bottom Line

The IBM Software Group site does a yeoman’s job of organizing and presenting its massive portfolio of software products and related offerings, but seems to have missed the memos on Web 2.0, Web 3.0, and social media behaviors that define best-in-class Websites.  It is a perfectly serviceable site circa 2008 — but offers little inspiration for Web teams trying to push on the design and social media envelopes.

Evaluation Criteria: 1,177 types of content, features & capabilities; 119 usability metrics

Related Report: 2010 Enterprise Software Website Rankings

Most companies need to rethink their online price & lead generation strategies. Ignoring the sales force is the first step.

I can’t quite figure out why so many companies avoid putting prices on their Website. Actually, I do know. The company’s sales force wants to embargo product prices to force Web visitors to fill out that pesky contact form or engage in an online sales chat. This, they say, allows them to sell the product’s value and benefits, and work around the product’s price.

This is a big mistake. Here’s three reasons why.

Price pre-qualifies if the visitor is a real prospect (need and ability to buy) or simply a window shopper.

Lowers the costs of sales by sifting out the wannabees from the winners, which focuses the sales force on real prospects who have the budget to buy.

And here’s the third (and all important) reason. Creating an avalanche of unqualified leads requires salespeople to cherry pick through them trying to deduce which ones fit their requirements—and which they are going to ignore. This, in turn, leads to a cacophony of complaints from the sales force that the Website isn’t generating enough quality leads. What they conveniently forget, of course, is that they brought themselves to the pity party.

For those who can’t or won’t publish prices (or have complex products that require a lot of additional bells and whistles) here’s an alternative approach that works. Use the “starting at” pricing gambit. You’ll find that this simple change will instantly filter out the wheat from the chaff – and allow more qualified buyers to plop right into your prospect pipeline.

I faithfully read Seth Goden’s blog every morning. One reason is that it’s blissfully short [memo to self]. The other reason is the golden marketing nuggets he brings to the table.

This morning is such a moment – and one that speaks to why so many LOB execs and stakeholders constantly push back on dotcom Web teams pitching new designs or the latest industry trends.

They don’t think they have a problem.

Face it. From most stakeholders’ perspective, dotcom teams come in two flavors: the “borg” [you will be assimilated] and the “butterfly” [this is the latest trend and we need to capitalize on it].  Neither are focused on a problem from the stakeholder’s point of view.

But what if a dotcom team saw its stakeholders as customers?  Like any good salesperson, the team would help stakeholders identify a problem and explore its cost or impact on the LOB.

In other words, dotcom teams should sell the problem.

Until stakeholders agree that they have a problem, the solution doesn’t count. That’s why so many projects end up in chaos.  In pushback, deliberate inertia, and stakeholders who spend their time deliberately coloring outside of the lines.

Companies eying new markets should avoid “Marie Antoinette” and “Frankenstein” support strategies. Here’s why.

You can tell a lot about a company’s prime customers by its Website—and even more by how customers fresh from acquisitions and market gambits get lost in the shuffle.

Examine companies like Dell, that has moved from its consumer roots into enterprise markets. Or, IBM’s, CA’s and Cisco’s endeavors to translate historical successes in the enterprise realm into SMB markets. And then there is Oracle’s attempt to execute simultaneous vertical and horizontal market strategies by lashing together its software applications with Sun’s hardware and storage products. There are plenty of examples.

If you think the “tell” of these (and other) companies’ successes or failures are found in their online marketing content, you would be looking in the wrong direction. In reality, the “tell” is found in their support and training zones.

Before support and training Web teams even entertain the hope for a successful market move, they must take these two approaches off the table: 

• Let ‘em eat cake. Some companies assume that all customers are created equal – and simply dump new customers into existing support and training zones. Think of it as the “Marie Antoinette (let ‘em eat cake)” strategy. In this scenario, enterprise customers don’t get the complex answers and training they need – and consumers get lost in messy support & training sites optimized for large accounts. In either case, it’s a bad behavior.

• Watch the birdie. Other companies decide to bolt market-specific support and training sites onto their existing venues. Think of this as the “Frankenstein” strategy. In this scenario, the company’s favored markets get center seat, while new markets and acquisitions get the “oh by the way” links in the right column, or at the bottom of support and training home pages. There’s nothing like an invisible link to tell “acquired”customers that they are second class citizens.

Both of these approaches tell new customers two important things. That (1) the vendor is more than willing to sell them products, but (2) won’t do the hard work necessary to deliver “after-sales” support and training optimized for their needs.

From our POV, two memos should be sent when a company decides to move up or down market.

The first should go to the marketing teams, giving them a heads up that they need to open and populate new product zones.

The second (and arguably most important) should be sent to the teams managing the company’s support and training zones warning them that “Marie Antoinette” and “Frankenstein” gambits don’t work. These teams need to put on their thinking caps, and recalibrate how they view and deliver their training and support sites.