2011 Enterprise Systems
A turbulent economy. Shifting priorities. Evaporating budgets. Welcome to the world enterprise systems Web teams face. To see how the biggest fish have fared in tight economic waters, we evaluated six enterprise systems Websites on the siteIQ eBusiness Index.
We stepped them through 1,231 types of content & features. Put them through their usability paces. Checked them from top to bottom – and turned them inside out. We scored, ranked, and rated every one. Then we put the answers into this handy report.
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Enterprise systems Websites are the aircraft carriers of the IT industry. Huge. Complicated. Hard to turn.
That’s why it’s always interesting to see what these teams are up to. Where they are fiddling. How they are innovating. And where they – and their stakeholders – are taking their eyes off the ball.
So here’s the question. What have the biggest enterprise systems Websites (and their slightly smaller brethren) been up to this year – who does it best – and are you paying attention to the same issues?
If you are looking for answers, you’ve come to the right place.
We set out to find the answers
To find out, we evaluated 6 enterprise systems Websites on the 2011 siteIQ eBusiness Index. We’re talking sites that do real business on the Web. They serve 7 million visitors a day (that’s over 218 million visitors a month) — and drop 38 million pages onto users’ desks every 24 hours.
Since opinions are good — but facts are better — we conducted these evaluations using our Best Practices Benchmark which is packed full of the 1,230 types of content, features & capabilities you need on a best-in-class Website.
Of course, great Websites are much more than the sum of their parts. That’s why we rolled up our sleeves and conducted a second usability review based on 119 questions that measure how each site achieves visitor goals & objectives.
Then we crunched the numbers — ranked & rated each support site — created cool graphs to tell the story — added our unvarnished opinions — and rolled it all up into this nifty report.
The Big Picture
When the going gets tough, the tough start schmoozing. And there’s no better place to start than a site’s corporate marketing and investor relations zones. That’s the big story in 2011. Once all of the pieces fell into place, HP.com’s, Dell.com’s and Intel.com’s investor relations zones ended up with huge Best Practices – and HP.com, IBM.com and Oracle.com each scored a corporate marketing Good Practice prize.
Here’s some other interesting things that happened.
IBM.com: The crown tilts. IBM.com lost its crown as the largest site to HP.com this year – but it beat HP.com handily on the usability front (not too hard since HP.com ranks 5th out of 6 sites). Throw in a #1 usability ranking (despite its slow motion revamp), and IBM.com ended up in first place. The numbers say that HP.com is breathing down IBM.com’s neck, but we think the dark horse is really Dell.com. To stay ahead of the pack in 2012, IBM.com needs to do something (anything) about its search and online communities.
HP.com: Big ship, big problems. HP.com may be the Bigfoot of IT Websites but it’s real story is all about usability – where it ranks 5th out of the six sites we reviewed (yikes!). The only bright spots on its usability landscape are delivered by the teams that operate the press, investor relations, and general corporate marketing zones. Like IBM.com, dismal search behaviors and features are one of HP.com’s important Achilles’ Heels (general navigation doesn’t fare well either).
Dell.com: Dancing on the head of a pin. Dell.com’s investor relations and corporate marketing zones have never been anything to write home about. Just the basics – and the persistent impression that you should already be in the know.
Thus, we were a bit surprised that Dell.com paid plenty of attention to schmoozing this year – resulting in a whopping 28% scoring increase in its investor relations zone. It also added content & features in every sales and marketing area. Support and training content, on the other hand, went on a diet.
Unfortunately all of this smoke and fury didn’t move Dell.com’s usability meter a whit – but it still ended up with the usability prize in the ecommerce, call to action, and search categories.
Oracle.com: Welcome to more “stuff”. Oracle.com went on a content binge this year, but all of this new “stuff” failed to produce any noticeable usability improvements. To be fair, Oracle.com’s usability already ranks second (so much for conventional wisdom) – its product marketing is considered a best practice performance. Training & education, ecommerce, industry marketing, and (of course) corporate marketing are all good practices worth a second look.
EMC.com: Treading water. EMC.com also added content & features in its investor relations and corporate events areas – and corporate blogs finally made their debut. Meanwhile, its support zone went on a crash diet. Add them all up and EMC.com spent 2011 treading water.
Intel.com: Twirling in the same place. Over the past year some things at Intel.com changed while almost everything else remained exactly the same. The slightest hint of an ecommerce facility and corporate blogs hit the airwaves. Other than that, nada.
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If you don’t care what competitive sites are doing, you’ll probably find some of our other reports more useful. On the other hand, if want a clear view of your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, what matters and why, this report is a great place to start. Here’s who will benefit most from this report.
- Teams that build, compete with (or want to get the real scoop on) the 6 enterprise systems sites we evaluated in this study.
- Digital & Web strategy directors & managers who are responsible for your company’s online strategy.
- User experience (UX) professionals who are burning the midnight oil to make your Website sticky – and a place your visitors love to love.
- Digital & Web marketing managers who want to create demand – harvest prospects – and laser focus your site on the B2B buying process.
- Competitive, usability, & visitor satisfaction analytics managers who need metrics to compare your site to competitors and report on its progress and challenges.
Here’s Why
Our clients tell us that they use our reports to:
- Cut through the competitive clutter and laser focus their teams (and executives) on the sites that deliver good & best practices in design, navigation, marketing (product, services, industry, channel, corporate, events), online communities, support, training, and recruiting – and are creating new standards and visitor expectations. (Here’s the whole list in case we missed something.)
- Get a bird’s eye view of which sites are the most usable — and exactly where they excel.
- Identify which sites deliver the perfect combination of content, features, & capabilities — and where their teams need to go back to the wood shed.
- Educate their executives, stakeholders & agency partners about the company’s support capabilities and challenges & and gain consensus to develop a master improvement plan.
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If you want the inside scoop on sites that create business on the Web — where they excel and how they do it — you’ve come to the right place. Here’s what’s in this 60-page report.
We start by giving you the big picture.
- The enterprise systems sites that are real industry leaders – and must on your competitive radar.
- Are the most usable.
- Deliver the content & features your visitors expect and need.
Think of it as a way to cut through the competitive clutter and laser focus your teams on the best and good practice Websites that really matter.
Then we move on to the details.
- We start by profiling each enterprise systems Website. Their usability strengths & challenges. What they do best – and where their teams need to go back to the drawing board.
- Show how each site ranks, rates, and compares across 18 Website categories.
- Identify the sites that deliver good and best practices.
- Sum it all up with quick reviews that bring the rankings and ratings to life. Pinpoint what matters. Give you the ammunition you need to coach your stakeholders and make your case.
Think of it as a perfect way to drill down into every nook and cranny of these sites – and see who does it best.
This report features more than 90 graphs, charts, and tables — perfect to educate your stakeholders and make a business case with executives.
- Bar charts show how these online support sites rank, rate & compare.
- Competitive eMAPs pinpoint real leaders at a glance.
Want to know what’s in the report page-by-page? Check out the simple Table of Contents.
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Facts are great – but graphs are better. That’s why all of our reports are packed with graphs you can use to make your case. Here are some interesting facts from this report.
But wait, there’s more!
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Some companies evaluate cars and toasters. We evaluate Websites.
Twice a year, we audit & evaluate the 23 Websites that represent the best-of-the-best on the IT Web. We put them through their usability paces. We score them based on over 1,200 types of content, features, & capabilities for eighteen Website zones & cross site utilities.
Then we rank and rate them based on the results.
Leading Web teams use the siteIQ eBusiness Index rankings to:
- Accurately identify how their Websites compete on the Web.
- Check if their sites are gaining or losing ground to competitors and industry requirements.
- See where time & treasure are paying off.
- Watch the sites that are changing user expectations & behaviors – and are setting new standards on the IT Web.
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