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→
This week we started our Q1 evaluations of 23 Websites, plus additional sites selected by our clients for comparison.
We’ve mixed up the siteIQ eBusiness Index for 2010. In some cases the decision was based on eliminating Websites that haven’t improved over the past year and don’t provide any good or best practices worth tracking. In other cases, sites have fallen off our list because they don’t exist anymore. That would be EDS.com which was integrated into HP.com — and Sun.com which went off the airwaves last week.
In both cases, these sites are a loss to anyone who cares about good and great practices. Don’t bother to follow them to their new homes. Their presence inside of their new parent’s sites is nothing to write home about.
Here’s some more about the new sites added to our roster – and why we’re singing “auld lang syne” to others. (If you are a siteIQ client you can read more about what we expect from these and other leading sites in 2010 in our new executive brief in the siteIntelligence Research Center). Read More→
An interesting thing happened when I reviewed the search terms used to find our Web properties this week. Search terms with the words ‘eselling’ and ‘b2b buying process’ jumped to over 50% of the total search requests. Dell.com and HP.com – both eselling powerhouses in their own right – ranked second, and the terms “NewEgg” and “CDW” ranked third. Anybody else get the feeling that Web managers are starting to focus on their Website’s selling bottom line?
These stats don’t come as much of a surprise since tough times call for more attention to how effectively the company’s Website creates – and more importantly, harvests – qualified prospects. Face it, nothing beats a Website for its global reach and the ability to win and woo potential buyers at the lowest possible cost.
Given these realities, it should be really interesting to see if the sales forces we test have finally gotten eselling religion. I wouldn’t bet on it
This, of course, brings me to an interesting question. Assuming the Website does its job, what happens next? Are salespeople actually contacting ‘anatomically correct’ prospects streaming in from your Website – or is your sales force still playing the same games we’ve seen in previous years? Which leading IT companies are doing the best job harvesting interested buyers? Which companies need to kick their sales force in the pants?
Since selling is the name of the game these days, we’ve decided to launch our 10th siteIQ Secret Prospect study this week. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this study, here’s the basic approach in four easy steps. Read More→
I’ve just finished an in-depth review of the Q4 2007 scores received by the professional services Websites on the siteIQ eBusiness Index (Accenture.com, EDS.com, Capgemini.com & IBM Global Services zone) – and it’s becoming clear that Web 2.0 is finally starting to take its toll on this industry segment. Although a rash of new video assets are notable on these sites, usability scores linked to these sites’ design & navigation are starting to slide. It’s a perceptive issue, to be sure, but one that illustrates that Web 2.0-centric behaviors observed at other IT sites (such as Cisco.com) are starting to set user expectations across the board. One look at these sites’ Web 2.0 behaviors underscores that these companies need to get a Web 2.0 strategy in place – and fast.
IBM Global Services got clobbered by siteIQ evaluators for an unruly site that makes it difficult for potential buyers to decipher one service offering from another.
Web 2.0 aside, other interesting findings jumped out this quarter.
IBM Global Services got clobbered by siteIQ evaluators for an unruly site that makes it difficult for potential buyers to decipher one service offering from another. As our senior evaluator Jeff Gaff aptly put it “eventually one can locate information, but it takes a bit of shuffling. Everything bounces back and forth so much that it becomes quite easy to get lost.” One of the culprits here appears to be the seemingly endless confusion between various services entities. In other words, building a site around organizational structures is still the fastest way to confuse and befuddle potential buyers.
In its final showing on the siteIQ eBusiness Index, Read More→
