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→
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. 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→
Overall: IBM.com
Usability: IBM.com
Content, Features & Capabilities: HP.com
But the siteIQ eBusiness Index is always about more than just rankings, ratings, and numbers. So what’s the story about what happened over the past 12 months? Here’s the rundown from first place to last: Read More→
When Cisco.com launched its mega-menu last year it set the best practice bar—and it was high. The mega-menu provided greater access into a large (and sometimes unwieldy) site. Its design was easy to scan and use. And, it was also attractive—which is no small feat in a small space. In the siteIQ blog Cisco launches drop down mega menus & fat footers, we applauded the design and architecture of its Product and Services menu. This post welcomes the Support menu into the best practice fold. Read More→
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: Read More→
You’d think that all support sites are created equal. If so, you’d be wrong.Turns out that support sites that target home and home office customers are very different than those that target large enterprises. Different features, architectures, strengths, and challenges. In fact, they are horses of a completely different color.
One would think that this observation would be a no brainer. Turns out, it’s a challenge for a lot of companies — especially major enterprise players that are wading into the consumer markets, including Cisco.com and CA.com. But, well-known consumer stalwarts, such as Dell.com and HP.com, haven’t broken the technical support code either. Simple fact, “one-size-fits-all” support thinking will get you into plenty of trouble.
We’re putting the finishing touches on a new best practice case study report that identifies the best of the best in home and home office markets. Companies like Apple.com and Adobe.com, plus outstanding support zones at Dell Home & Home Office, HP Home & Home Office, Symantec Norton, McAfee Home & Home Office, and Cisco Home Networking.
Kenna will be filling you in on some of the key details from her drive across the IT Web and her deep dives into these great sites. She tells me that the devil’s in the tricky details. Stay tuned.
Why do so many companies start with their support site?Your support site is supposed to be the fount of knowledge for your customers—and a way to prove your excellence to prospects engaged in the buying process. It’s there to solve your customer’s problems. Speed them the information they need. Show them how to use your product. Make all of the wrongs with your product right.
Since happy customers are the cornerstone of successful companies, it would make sense that support sites would be laser focused on sending all of the right messages – right? Wrong. Most are actually sending plenty of wrong messages – and what they are really saying is startling. Read More→
