Ever since we started this happy little band back in ’96, we’ve proposed that one of the hallmarks of a best practices Website is a well rounded volume of content, tools, and resources that are delivered in a manner that allows visitors to easily achieve stated tasks & goals. Through the years, we’ve noted time and again that Web properties like HP.com & IBM.com rise to the top of the competitive eBusiness Index rankings because they provide visitors with copious quantities of fairly evenly distributed assets & data. Not surprisingly, we’ve also reported that sites like Alcatel-Lucent.com, Lenovo.com, and EDS.com (just to name a few) fall to the bottom of the rankings because they deliver smaller, less balanced content catalogs.

What did strike me,  is just how disproportionately these three laggers supply content across their sites—and the fact that the zones in the most trouble are the ones that present information critical to the company’s core business model or market strategy

Over time, we’ve illustrated this point in a variety of ways, including graphs that show relative performance by category; trendlines that demonstrate competitive strengths & weaknesses; charts that identify content density; and tables that list overall scores. This past year, however, we’ve been using a handy little analysis tool called star charts (a.k.a. spider graphs) that allow us to look at evaluation data in a whole slew of new ways, including a view that demonstrates how well rounded a site’s content portfolio really is.

So, when it came time to roll up the fourth quarter 2007 siteIQ eBusiness Index evaluation numbers, I thought it might be interesting to use a star chart that maps competitive performance by category to illustrate just how balanced sites like HP.com & IBM.com really are. Then I decided to juxtapose their content allocation against some of the less stellar performers on the Index including Alcatel-Lucent.com, Lenovo.com, and EDS.com.

Now, I’ve got to tell you that I wasn’t totally surprised at what I saw when I finished entering the data and looked at the chart. Read More→