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Archive for brocade.com

2011 Online Support Rankings | Why the biggest aren’t always the best

By Marty Gruhn · Comments (0)
Monday, October 17th, 2011

So much for conventional wisdom.

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→

Comments (0)
Categories : POV (point of view), Support
Tags : best practices, brocade.com, ca.com, cdw.com, cisco.com, dell.com, emc.com, hp.com, ibm software group, ibm.com, intuit.com, juniper.net, newegg.com, oracle.com, sap.com, sas.com, Support, symantec.com, Usability, website design, website rankings

Website Rankings: Hits, misses & a little bit more

By Marty Gruhn · Comments (0)
Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

There are plenty of hits and misses on this year’s roster. My favorites are . . .

In my last post, I shared some info about the top five Websites on the siteIQ eBusiness Index. Here’s my interesting surprises and “oops” list:

Symantec.com’s usability ranks second, and the site misses a “Good Practice” rating by a hair.

Juniper.net and Oracle.com complete the usability top five. Of the two, Juniper.net is most likely to move up a slot and knock CA.com off its perch.

Intel.com aced the online recruiting category and is the only four star (the best) in this category. (OK, so most recruiting zones are a big snooze – but we have to give Intel.com chops for its four star performance).

Services marketing continues to be Nortel.com’s claim to fame; HP.com and IBM.com are still second tier contenders.

Juniper.net hits the high note in the communities category – but Cisco.com and Intel.com also operate four star (the best) communities. (This is another way of saying that the new guys are zipping past community pioneers).

If call to action is your bag, look no further than Cisco.com. It is the only call to action “Best Practice” site on the eBusiness Index.

Newegg.com’s e-commerce capabilities puts it with the big boys: Dell.com & HP.com. Newegg ranks third with four stars (the best) and a “Good Practice” nod.

A couple of new entrants on the 2010 eBusiness Index roster did better than expected.

  • Brocade.com and EMC.com rank 7th and 8th on the usability chart – and finish in the middle of the pack when all of the scores are tallied up (EMC.com ranks 12th; Brocade ranks 14th).
  • Among the sites that debuted on the Index in 2010, Deloitte.com and SAS.com turned out to be boat anchors. Deloitte finished dead last – and SAS.com debuted in 17th place (out of 23 Websites).

Related research: The eBusiness Index Report.  If you are a siteIQ client or subscriber, click here.

Comments (0)
Categories : Website Rankings
Tags : brocade.com, dell.com, deloitte.com, hp.com, ibm.com, intel.com, juniper.net, microsoft.com, newegg.com, nortel.com, oracle.com ca.com, sap.com, symantec.com

Mega and Fat Become the Fashions of the Day

By Marty Gruhn · Comments (4)
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Click on this graph to see a lightbox of all best practices in this post

Five Websites are setting the pace

It’s interesting how something starts to hit a tipping point on the IT Web. Mega-menus are one of these designs – and fat footers aren’t far behind them.

In the mega-menu race, there are two main strategies in play, and some good and best practices worth considering.

On the strategy side, we have two basic approaches in evidence these days: mega-menus targeted at straight navigation – and those that add product marketing, corporate marketing and call to action dimensions.  In every case, there are great examples of both approaches on the IT Web.  Here’s some places to start: Read More→

Comments (4)
Categories : Design, Navigation, Usability, Web 2.0
Tags : brocade.com, dell.com, Design, emc.com, fat footer, hp.com, insight.com, juniper.net, mega-menu, microsoft.com, Navigation, newegg.com, novell.com, Usability, Web 2.0

Why IBM Software, SAS, EMC, Intel, Brocade & Deloitte made the cut

By Marty Gruhn · Comments (0)
Monday, February 1st, 2010

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→

Comments (0)
Categories : Branding, Communities, Design, eSelling, POV (point of view), Strategy, Web 2.0
Tags : accenture.com, adobe.com, best practice, brand, brocade.com, Communities, customization, deloitte.com, Design, developer, ebusiness index, ecommerce, eds.com, emc.com, good practice, hp.com, ibm global services, ibm software group, intel.com, Marketing, Navigation, sas.com, Search, Strategy, sun.com, Web 2.0, website design, website rankings
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Marty Gruhn on Twitter

  • New case study on the way: The IBM SWG Website team is executing its cult of personality strategy to perfection. http://t.co/YuBBODwr about 15 hours ago from web ReplyRetweetFavorite
  • Smart moves. IBM uses "Connect" tab 2 drive visitors 2 high value social media venues & LinkedIn groups to start conversations with IBMers 05:20:29 PM January 13, 2012 from web ReplyRetweetFavorite
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