Overall: IBM Global Services
Usability & Effectiveness: IBM Global Services
Content, Features & Capabilities: Accenture.com
The ripples of IBM.com’s latest site redesign reached the professional services segment this year and has rocked Accenture.com’s first place ranking. The question now is whether or not the tide will turn in 2012. Here’s the rundown from first place to last: Read More→
Overall: Symantec.com
Usability & Effectiveness: Symantec.com
Content, Features & Capabilities: Microsoft.com
Each business software site’s redesign over the past year has caused content and features to shrink on a huge scale. But did these diets help the sites’ usability scores? At least one Website should think so. Here’s the rundown from first place to last: Read More→
Overall: Cisco.com
Usability & Effectiveness: Cisco.com
Content, Features & Capabilities: Cisco.com
Site refreshes, redesigns, and company acquisitions. All were in play in the networking systems segment last year. Did these facelifts improve these site’s usability? Did HP’s acquisition of 3Com give the old ProCurve site a new lease on life? Here’s the rundown from first place to last: Read More→
Overall: Oracle.com
Usability & Effectiveness: IBM Software Group
Content, Features & Capabilities: Oracle.com
With two companies performing complete site overhauls–and one nudging its site into place over the past year—rankings were bound to change in 2011. So which sites were the major movers and shakers over the past 12 months? Which ones are the sites to watch through 2012? Here’s the rundown from first place to last: Read More→
This week, we took the new Intel.com site for a spin. Let’s just say there’s more (and less) to this site than meets the eye.Intel.com’s latest redesign is like buying an exotic car. It is visually striking, can be fun to drive, and has more bells and whistles than other cars on the road. But going exotic has tradeoffs. Choosing to pass on getting the full options package can leave the driving experience far less exciting than advertised. In fact, it may even break down–always in inconvenient locations. And the unique controls and design that seems edgy and innovative in the beginning quickly become confusing and irritating.
I don’t talk about Oracle.com much. In fact, I speak about them so little that one would be lead to believe that I hold a grudge against them. Sure, they unceremoniously erased one of the best enterprise systems sites from the Internet–Sun.com. But, I won’t hold that against them. No, I don’t write about them much for one reason:
My Mother taught me if you don’t have something nice to say about someone, don’t say anything at all.
There’s a litany of issues I have with Oracle.com ranging from design to innovation (or rather a lack thereof). But today, my rant is about Oracle.com’s content. Read More→
The devil is in the detailsLast 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. Read More→
4 questions every Web team should answerThe other day, I was thinking about the latest social media snafu HP.com’s Networking zone recently ran into. Its experience is an important lesson about how dangerous displaying the musings, and sometimes wrath, of the masses can be. This led me to ponder: what questions do Website teams need to ask themselves before deciding to pipe social media content onto their Website pages? Off the top of my head, four major questions come to mind:
What is the objective? Why are you planning to use social media in the first place? This isn’t to say that your Web team shouldn’t consider social media; only that you need to ask yourself some tough questions before you start. Read More→
HP.com brings a knife to a gunfightWhen social networking sites hit the Internet, companies spent many, many months watching it with a wary eye. But once leading IT companies (such as Sun, Dell, and Cisco) took the leap, the race to integrate social media into a company’s marketing mix was on. This has led almost every company to declare social media as a major influence—if not the cornerstone—of its future marketing strategies.
Bold pronouncements aside, the reality is this: most companies are scared silly because they don’t have the faintest idea about how and when to use social media to their advantage.
They should be scared.
As a case in point, let’s consider how HP.com’s new “Change the rules of networking” campaign and associated Web page goes off the rails. This page launches the new face of HP Networking using the perfect combination of “hip & happenin’” content. Lightbox videos. Web 2.0 behaviors. Twitter. You name it. With all these cool new ingredients, where could HP.com possibly go wrong?
Let us count the ways.
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.
