The annual siteIQ eBusiness rankings just hit the airwaves. This year’s report is a whopper. 95 pages, 108 graphs – and our usual politically incorrect take on what it all means.

Here’s how some of the 2011 rankings shake out.

Overall Performance.  IBM.com and Cisco.com share the winner’s podium.

2011 was the year that IBM.com transformed itself from a large, aging duckling into a swan to be reckoned with (at least above the water line). There’s been many a late night for the IBM.com team—and the “wow” factor inherent in its new design has gone a long way toward keeping it in the top slot this year.

It’s been many a moon since Cisco.com had its overnight makeover—but this team’s intrepid iterative design strategy keeps this site fresh and innovative season after season. Cisco.com has building a better mousetrap down to a science—and that’s why it bumped IBM.com over and shares the #1 spotlight this year.

Usability & Effectiveness | The best hold their own

It’s no surprise that the overall winners—IBM.com and Cisco.com—also aced the usability & effectiveness tests. Both teams have been busy performing some pretty substantial site facelifts over the past year—and their high wire acts paid some nice dividends.

CA.com, IBM Software Group and Symantec.com complete the top five usability roster. CA.com held its own (third place), IBM Software jumped into fourth (from 6^th), and Symantec.com — last year’s usability darling — slipped from third to fifth.

Symantec.com’s fall from grace sounds like bad news for the team, but it’s actually a bit of high praise. After all, most of the Symantec.com site hasn’t really changed much over the past 36 months. That’s a virtual lifetime in Internet years. Staying in the top five is a testament to all of the hard work that went into this site’s base design and architecture. But times are changing—and it will be interesting to see if Symantec.com can keep up.

Content, features & capabilities | The same dance continues and Dell finally gets its bragging rights.

Mirror, mirror on the wall. Which is the biggest Website of all? Once the mist in the mirror clears, you’ll be looking at HP.com. In fact, this year, HP.com succeeded in getting the top spot all to itself by bumping off its long-standing 80 pound rival gorilla IBM.com. If you squint real hard in the mirror, you’ll see Cisco.com quietly making the donuts in third place.

While IBM, HP, and Cisco executed their complex kabuki dances, Dell.com was busy thumping some other sites down the Index. This year, it took the top spot in the online support category after watching HP and IBM toss the winner’s baton back and forth. We’ve always challenged Dell.com’s self-proclaimed assertion that its support was the biggest & best in the business. Now it’s (partially) true.

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Overall: Accenture.com
Usability & Effectiveness: Accenture.com
Content, Features & Capabilities: Accenture.com

Last week, we took a close look at how classic professional services Websites fare when they are put under the siteIQ microscope–and made some pretty substantial changes in the ways these Websites are measured on the siteIQ benchmarks. The net result is a much slimmer benchmark that hones in on the unique ways these companies do business on the Web.

Since there’s no time like the present to see the impact of these changes, we put the three professional services Websites on the siteIQ eBusiness Index through this new evaluation model. Then we published the results in a new report.

So how did things change?

A lot.

First and foremost, Accenture.com moved from second to first place courtesy of very strong navigational, search, and services marketing scores. Services marketing now rates a Good Practice. As important, Accenture.com’s overall usability beats all comers.

IBM Global Services’ Website ended up in a reasonably close second place. It matches Accenture.com’s services marketing Good Practice, but took it on the chin in the navigation and search categories. Just goes to show you that paying attention to those pesky architecture and cross-site utilities can make a huge difference.

And how did Deloitte.com fare in a rising tide that floated all boats? Ho hum. It still ranks third and gained one star–but missed the Good Practice dock by a mile. This site’s best showing is in (yikes!) online recruiting. On the other hand, every services and corporate marketing category ranks third.

And what about the rest of 2012? We’re betting that IBM Global Services’ slow motion revamp will start to pay dividends by the end of this year. That means that Accenture.com shouldn’t rest on its laurels–and should pay close attention to the cult of personality strategy IBM.com is rolling out.

More scoring details, plus new rankings and ratings, are available in our new Professional Services Report. If you already own a copy of our earlier report, a new copy is on the way to your desktop. Library subscribers can pick up their copy here (you’ll need those pesky log in credentials). If you aren’t a subscriber you can learn more about The Library here.

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:

1. Any Web team that focuses on site usability should put Symantec.com at the top of its watch list. This site’s usability ranking not only debuted at number 2 on the siteIQ Enterprise Software Index, but held its number 1 position in usability while stealing first place in overall performance from Microsoft.com in the siteIQ Business Software Index. Not bad for a year’s work.
2. Microsoft.com’s site reductions during its rolling redesign took a toll on its performance this year. It is still the ten-ton gorilla in the business software segment, but its third place usability ranking is pure monkey business.
3. Adobe.com’s story is similar to Microsoft.com’s. It is the smallest of the business software sites reviewed—and it got smaller over the course of the year. But unlike Microsoft.com, Adobe.com brings in relatively admirable usability scores. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to reach any of the brass rings in 2011.

There’s plenty more rankings & ratings – and our take on the evaluation results – in our new Business Software Report.  Subscribers can pick up a copy in the Library. If you aren’t a subscriber you can learn more here…..

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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:

1. It is no surprise that networking giant and usability muse Cisco.com swept the Index awards. The site has been undergoing an iterative refresh over the past year. What is surprising is how the slight changes improved Cisco.com’s performance enough to award them 12 first place rankings—just in usability alone. Congrats Cisco.com!
2. HP Networking’s inclusion on the siteIQ Index this year upset every site’s apple cart—and stole second place from Juniper.net. But did HP Networking really get second place all on its own? Let’s just say it is nice to be part of the HP.com family.
3. The site that took the greatest hit this year was Juniper.net. Despite a sweeping Website redesign (one well worth checking out), the site lost its second place position (in all major categories) and its changes failed to move its usability scores one whit. But it wasn’t all bad news for Juniper.net. Its work exposed Juniper.net as a major player in online communities—including a first place ranking for Corporate Blogs.
4. Brocade.com gets the sleeper of the year award for stealing second place in overall usability from Juniper.net. Like Juniper.net, Brocade.com has been making changes to its site too. The difference is that all its latest updates actually moved the usability ball down the field. But Brocade.com hardly has time to rest on its laurels if it is going to bump Juniper.net out of third place overall.

There’s plenty more rankings & ratings – and our take on the evaluation results – in our new Networking Systems Report. Subscribers can pick up a copy in the Library. If you aren’t a subscriber you can learn more here…..

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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:

1. This year Oracle.com retained its title as the content “big foot” on the siteIQ eBusiness Index (1)—and this footprint worked to deliver it the first place ranking. On the other hand, a broader look at the enterprise software industry shows that Oracle.com doesn’t have any room to rest on its laurels. Now it has CA.com gunning to be an enterprise software Goliath and IBM Software is upping the usability bar. To compete in the future, Oracle.com needs to up its game.
2. Incremental change was the name of the game at CA.com. That’s not to say there were any major splashes or “ta da’s”. Just a series of re-launches and endless tweaking that ended up creating a noticeable transformation. On the other hand, one look at CA.com’s scores and rankings shows that change isn’t always a good thing. CA.com lost its #1 usability ranking (dropped to third)—and is the only site that registered a net decrease in its usability & effectiveness score.
3. IBM Software’s latest site redesign is part of IBM.com’s Centennial revamp that is trying to change all of the rules. Here, The IBM Software team’s hard work—and CA.com’s tumble—delivered it the first place usability & effectiveness ranking and the only Good Practice rating in the group. The site’s renovation also delivered more content & features—but the real story is the site’s impressive string of 13 “Good Practice” usability ratings. The fact that its online communities are now visible on the site didn’t hurt either.
4. We didn’t add Symantec.com to the enterprise software mix this year because it’s selling large, complex software solutions. We added it because the enterprise systems “big wigs” are continuing to move down market with SMB and SaaS solutions that rely on the kinds of marketing and eCommerce capabilities that have long been a Symantec.com forte. So how did Symantec.com fare when compared to its mega software brethren? On the one hand, there’s no doubt that Symantec’s content & features are the size of a newt (relatively speaking). On the other hand, Symantec.com proves that small can be mighty. It usability & effectiveness debuted at second place—which proves that it knows how to capitalize on every single asset.
5. In April the German giant SAP.com unveiled a ginormous make-over that is still a work in progress. But if early scores are any indication, this new site is likely to give other sites a run for their money. Within a month of launch, this partial implementation was already moving the site’s content and usability & effectiveness scoring needles in the right direction. It ranks fifth to be sure—but its strong showing tells us that SAP.com will be a serious competitor within the next 12 months.
6. SAS.com’s scores paint a picture of a site that is running hard to stay in place. Here, substantial corporate marketing-class additions and improved communities visibility delivered the largest increase in overall content, features & capabilities scores—but burning the content midnight oil didn’t move its usability & effectiveness scores one whit. It ends up in 6th place (that’s dead last) with a 50.96% score and two stars (below average).

There’s plenty more rankings & ratings – and our take on the evaluation results – in our new Enterprise Software Report.

(1) Note: Oracle.com’s hardware product areas (a.k.a. Sun Microsystems hardware & systems) were not reviewed for this industry segment.

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Kenna Dian: Don’t Bother

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 really want to buy Intel.com’s exotic new design. But in the end, I simply can’t afford the time, effort and resources I need to invest to make it work. Some of my biggest gripes are:

The product content is like a Chinese dinner. There’s a nice selection of information available, but it is difficult to find anything really substantial in a single location.

Too many things that make you go “huh?” This site presents links, link summaries, and even images, that make no sense, are meaningless, or–at best–make the visitor work to know what they’re for.

Content below the fold is often invisible. Design misfires can make the page appear to be only one screen load when in fact there is much more. Unfortunately, this invisible content is some of the most critical for visitors wanting to buy Intel’s products.

All Flash, no pan. One thing quickly becomes apparent while surfing this site. If you don’t have Adobe Flash Player you won’t just have a mediocre experience—you will be missing information.

Marty:  Don’t Bother (with a couple of moments of brilliance)

I hate to say this Kenna, but my vote is split on the new Intel.com Website. On the plus side, this new design does a great job of pushing the whole negative design, smart search, ubiquitous videos, and mega menu balls down the field. It also had more doodads than a gourmet kitchen. On other hand, it’s also the poster child for some design decisions that should send smart teams right back to the drawing board.

When all of these pros and cons were added up and weighted, I ended up on the “Danger Will Robinson” side of the ledger. Here’s three reasons why.

Intel.com joins HP.com at the forefront of a very tricky (and IMHO dangerous) design trend—flexible designs. These layouts adjust to different screen sizes and resolutions so Websites can adapt to a potpourri of different user devices and platforms. The laptop. The desktop. The tablet. The phone.  Instead of designing a Website for each platform—why not use a flexible design that can act as a “one-size-fits-all” solution? Well, one reason is that it doesn’t always work. [There's more on why in the complete review published in our Case Studies Library--see the link below].

The name of this game is Apple, and it plays by its own rules. Here, the problem lies in the fact that Intel.com’s cool new tools rely on Flash—which is a non-starter on Apple devices.  That means Intel.com is about 150 million devices short of a Happy Meal.

This site is harder to crack than Fort Knox.  Intel.com’s new home page is a pluperfect example of a new genre. Visual.  Edgy.  Spare. Out of the norm. Unfortunately, it also seems to operate under the premise that most visitors want to start their journey by searching for the content located inside the site. I don’t know about you, but conducting a “hail Mary” search without any road signs is my activity of last resort.  Sorry Intel. D-

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Other Stuff to do:

Learn about how IBM.com is changing up the rules in the Visions of IBM.com’s grand redesign emerge blog post.

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.

With communities and social networking becoming a requirement for IT Websites, product and service marketing content is becoming more focused on visitors’ needs. The prose tells them how the company’s products and services will solve their problems and help achieve their business goals. Some connect their technologies and benefits with real-world scenarios that visitors relate to. The best of the best even make it downright engaging to read.

The new message: “It’s all about you.”

Let’s compare this content approach to that on Oracle.com. A review of over twenty hardware and software product pages showed that Oracle’s name is mentioned a whopping 5 times more often than the words “you” or “yours” on a single page*. On some that number increased to over 10 to one. Combine that with page layouts that always begin with essays about “Why Oracle” and articles about its industry leadership, and you only get one message:

“It’s all about Oracle.”

But Oracle is not alone

HP.com also suffers from the “all about me” disease. HP.com’s ratios almost perfectly mirror Oracle.com’s. Product page content often mention HP five times more often than “you”. This increases to 10 to 1 on pages that provide lists of links to its products or related documents. HP.com does have one saving grace. Its page layouts mix up the content so it’s less obvious that HP is tooting its own horn.

The Bottom Line

The fact is people buy products because they have a problem that needs solved—not because the company is (or thinks it is) fabulous. Tout the product. Relate it to visitors’ needs. If they can understand this and it solves their problem, they will buy it.

What to avoid:

• Sentences that begin with the company name: if there is more than one, there is too many
• Listing the company name before actual product names: if visitors are on the company site, they know what company made the product.
• Topics that only speak about the company: this includes “Why [insert company name]?” content that runs more than 3 sentences.

How do the other enterprise systems sites fare?

IBM.com (software and hardware products) | The ratio of the usage of “IBM” to “you” or “yours” was a surprising 1:1 on many IBM Software page. In fact, on some pages the word “you” was used twice as much as “IBM”. IBM.com’s hardware product content does not fare quite as well with a ratio of 3 to 1.

Intel.com Business | The Intel.com site did not fare quite as well as IBM.com. On average Intel’s name was mentioned 3 times more often than the word “you”.

*Navigation panels were not included. Product names and links located in the body of the page were.

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.

The 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. Is it to encourage conversation with customers? Generate leads? Master the wisdom of crowds? Prove your company is “with it”? If the latter is the answer, you are going down a dangerous path. On the other hand, if you are really looking for people to tell you what they think, be careful what you wish for. Expect the worst and plan accordingly.

How complex is the topic? This is where choosing the right social media tool is critical. Complex topics require two important things—character space and smart moderators.

Esoteric and incendiary topics, such as strategies, direction statements, or defense of “good ideas gone bad,” require space for participants to fully present their opinions, and for smart moderators to manage the conversation. For these discussions, blogs, forums, and FaceBook provide the best formats.

On the other hand, highly-focused topics that mention a company’s home-runs, such as what customers like best about a certain product or overwhelmingly popular Website features – or link readers to an important article or press release — will require less space and moderation since the posts will naturally be largely positive. In these cases, Twitter is a relatively safe bet.

Who will man the ramparts? Choosing and training the right moderators is the deciding factor in the success or failure of any social media engagement. Although this seems like a no brainer, the Web is littered with endless examples of interns and part-timers being sent in to do a professional’s job.

Remember this. In any social media discussion, the company’s moderators are the voice of the company—in essence, the new PR team. They are on the front lines facing the unvarnished opinions of customers, journalists, investors, general crazies – and competitors who want to spoil the soup.

This complexity means that being a moderator is a tough, and often thankless, job. It is also why it’s critical that people with the right temperament, education, and training are managing any type of social media discussion. Unprepared moderators—or none at all—allow the masses to define the company’s reputation and value proposition. Good moderators protect the company’s brand.

What is the probable (not best case) outcome? Did a product have serious glitches? Did financial projections fall woefully short? Most companies will shy away from social media to manage these events. In reality, social media is actually the perfect opportunity to set the story straight. This is where the executives rally the troops, craft their best “This is our finest hour” speeches, and moderators steel themselves to manage the damage. Planning for the best possible outcome leaves moderators flatfooted. Planning for the most realistic (or even worst) outcome gives the company the opportunity to send the right message and turn the tide of public opinion.

The cost of being cool

Although these four questions are likely to spur a multitude of other issues, one thing is clear. Social media is dangerous, wild, and highly unpredictable. That’s what makes it “cool”.

But, chasing “cool” without preparing for the real world is a costly mistake. Like all things Web, social media requires the types of complicated planning and cross-organizational coordination that can suck the excitement out of a project.

On the other hand, not doing your homework is sure to lead to a social media presence that is a nightmare for your company to manage, and a public venue for the aggravated and aggrieved. When this happens, social media ends up as a “cool” strategy that is very “un-cool” indeed.

When 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.

True to its new “voice of the market” strategy, HP.com is using Twitter feeds to create rich marketing content. Unfortunately, the “market” doesn’t seem very impressed. With so little space available for people to adequately state their case, the tweets amount to little more than insults and “happy talk” retweets by HP employees. Hardly the rich discourse and market endorsements HP had in mind.

Twitter formats make damage control difficult, if not impossible. It’s easy to hurl insults in 140 characters – and almost impossible to counter them in the same space. Twitter’s disconnected rolling dialogs also make it virtually impossible for any company to start a conversation and effectively connect the dots. The net result? A rolling critique of HP’s Network strategy on a campaign page intended to pitch HP as a change agent in the networking industry.

So much for using “the voice of the market” as the “hip & happenin’” way to create rich marketing content.

Real estate counts. Most companies practice their own forms of damage control by limiting their tweet rolls to a revolving line in the body of a main page (great for speed readers) or stuffing them in the right panel (perfect when you want to look “cool” but don’t really want visitors to read the tweets).

HP.com, in contrast, dedicates half of its page to these ongoing “conversations”. This is a perfect formula when the tweets are happy talk and kudos. Not so much when “market voices” are opining that Cisco is the better choice.

The Bottom Line | HP.com provides a cautionary tale for any company planning to use Twitter as “rich marketing content”.  Twitter is a horrible marketing platform that can slip out from under you at the drop of a hat.  Its 140 character format doesn’t allow people to fully state and justify their opinions, or allow company moderators to respond effectively. As important, these Twitter feeds demand full-time moderators. If they aren’t on your plan, consider it another reason to avoid Twitter like the plague.

And what about HP.com’s Change the Rules of Networking campaign and associated page? Think of this as a prime example of a social media hole—and why HP.com should stop digging.