The annual siteIQ eBusiness rankings just hit the airwaves. This year’s report is a whopper. 95 pages, 108 graphs – and our usual politically incorrect take on what it all means.

Here’s how some of the 2011 rankings shake out.

Overall Performance.  IBM.com and Cisco.com share the winner’s podium.

2011 was the year that IBM.com transformed itself from a large, aging duckling into a swan to be reckoned with (at least above the water line). There’s been many a late night for the IBM.com team—and the “wow” factor inherent in its new design has gone a long way toward keeping it in the top slot this year.

It’s been many a moon since Cisco.com had its overnight makeover—but this team’s intrepid iterative design strategy keeps this site fresh and innovative season after season. Cisco.com has building a better mousetrap down to a science—and that’s why it bumped IBM.com over and shares the #1 spotlight this year.

Usability & Effectiveness | The best hold their own

It’s no surprise that the overall winners—IBM.com and Cisco.com—also aced the usability & effectiveness tests. Both teams have been busy performing some pretty substantial site facelifts over the past year—and their high wire acts paid some nice dividends.

CA.com, IBM Software Group and Symantec.com complete the top five usability roster. CA.com held its own (third place), IBM Software jumped into fourth (from 6^th), and Symantec.com — last year’s usability darling — slipped from third to fifth.

Symantec.com’s fall from grace sounds like bad news for the team, but it’s actually a bit of high praise. After all, most of the Symantec.com site hasn’t really changed much over the past 36 months. That’s a virtual lifetime in Internet years. Staying in the top five is a testament to all of the hard work that went into this site’s base design and architecture. But times are changing—and it will be interesting to see if Symantec.com can keep up.

Content, features & capabilities | The same dance continues and Dell finally gets its bragging rights.

Mirror, mirror on the wall. Which is the biggest Website of all? Once the mist in the mirror clears, you’ll be looking at HP.com. In fact, this year, HP.com succeeded in getting the top spot all to itself by bumping off its long-standing 80 pound rival gorilla IBM.com. If you squint real hard in the mirror, you’ll see Cisco.com quietly making the donuts in third place.

While IBM, HP, and Cisco executed their complex kabuki dances, Dell.com was busy thumping some other sites down the Index. This year, it took the top spot in the online support category after watching HP and IBM toss the winner’s baton back and forth. We’ve always challenged Dell.com’s self-proclaimed assertion that its support was the biggest & best in the business. Now it’s (partially) true.

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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.

Finally, don’t get me started about most site’s support program content. (You know, the stuff that explains why you have to pay to play.)  First, you can’t find it. When you do, it’s packed with so many superlatives you need a dictionary to figure it out.

Honestly, you’d think support teams would get it after doodling on the Web for 16 years.

Drum Roll, Please

Given my opinion of support on the Web, I was surprised how much the 2011 support evaluations reflected my opinions of these support sites. Most of the sites we evaluated deliver half of the content, features & capabilities deployed on best-in-class support sites. With the exception of four sites—Cisco.com, Symantec.com, IBM.com and the IBM Software Group site—every site’s usability misses the Good Practice mark.

I’d probably throw a bone to Dell.com, EMC.com, and Microsoft.com for coming close—but the rest are simply not up to snuff.

I’ve just finished putting the finishing touches on our new 2011 online support rankings and ratings report which published today. Here’s some of the more interesting things in this new report.

IBM, Dell and HP have all the goodies

IBM.com’s, Dell.com’s and HP.com’s monster-size support sites handed them the top rankings this year. If you want to create a world-class support size packed with every bell and whistle, you don’t have to look much further than here. Among the players, Dell.com is the biggest, but IBM.com puts its goodies together to better effect (its usability ranks third; Dell.com ranks fifth).

This brings me to the real tail that wags the dog.

Cisco.com proves an important point

When usability is the issue, we’ve always said that small can be mighty—and Cisco.com proves the point. Cisco.com’s support site took first place usability honors—which is a testament to all of the hard work we’ve seen on the site this year. If you are a siteIntelligence Case Studies Library subscriber, you can see Cisco.com’s best-in-class innovations here: https://siteiq.centraldesktop.com/sirc/blog/1088332/view/bytag/cisco (Category: support, Tag: cisco). (Have your login info handy).

From a usability perspective, Cisco.com has the most complete roster of support information that is easy to find. To see why, take Cisco.com’s site search engine for a spin and pay attention to post search filtering capabilities. Then check out the support zone’s fly-out navigational panel. If you want to learn why these matter, check out Cisco.com’s best practice case studies here: https://siteiq.centraldesktop.com/sirc/blog/1088332/view/bytag/cisco. (You guessed it: subscription & login required.)

Finding support content on most sites is a "Where's Waldo?" moment. Only 5 sites hit the mark.

Not so fast. The winners should cancel their victory lap.

So where are the pleasant surprises? Put Brocade.com, EMC.com, and Symantec.com on that list.

• Brocade.com has the most complete & thorough support program information (a Best Practice) -– and does the best job of encouraging visitors to take the next step.
• EMC.com’s support program information is easier to find—and does the best job of providing program contact information.
• Symantec.com delivers the best support click streams, which generated the highest Good Practice rating for all of its hard work.

And what about the rest of the pack? You know, those other 13 support Websites on the evaluation list?  Let’s just say there was another interesting surprise.

Earth to enterprise: what are you thinking?

With the exception of IBM Software Group, enterprise software sites need to up their usability game. From my perspective, their rankings are downright embarrassing.

CA.com ranks 11^th, Oracle.com ranks 12^th and SAP.com brings up the back of the pack in 15^th place. The only support sites that are worse than these triplets are reseller sites (CDW.com, Insight.com and Newegg.com) –and they don’t provide much, if any, support on their sites. Yikes!

So how does IBM Software Group stay out of this industry ditch? IBM.com’s highly integrated support portal is the wind beneath its wings. To see why this portal delivers a bit of online support nirvana, check out our case study in the Library: https://siteiq.centraldesktop.com/sirc/blogentry/5334686/. (Yep, you’ll need that pesky login information).

Dell.com support is really a tale of two cities.

Finally, no analysis is complete without taking a look at the conventional wisdom corner; in this case the prevailing belief that Dell.com operates the biggest and best online support site. This may (or may not) be true behind the Dell Premier firewall—but it’s a mixed bag if you are on the public side of the equation.

When the numbers are rolled up, Dell.com’s support zone’s content, features & capabilities rank #1, but its usability slips into fifth place–right behind the IBM Software Group site. As important, it only ranks first in one out of ten usability categories (a Good Practice for support zone logic). Other than that, Dell.com persistently ranks in second and third place.

The bottom line

So there you have it. The roster of winners based on 138 things support sites should provide–plus ten ways they should help users achieve their objectives. For the top five, I send hardy congratulations. For the rest of the pack, roll up your sleeves. There’s lots of work ahead.

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:

1. IBM.com lost sole ownership of its first place position–and with that some bragging rights. Although they added another “Best Practice” rating under their belt, they lost three “Good Practice” ratings due to HP.com’s massive site footprint—which only got larger over the past year. Nevertheless, IBM.com still holds its own—albeit by a margin that is half of what it used to be.
2. Believe it or not, HP.com has a lot to crow about. It garnered a first place ranking for Content, Features & Capabilities, making it the most robust enterprise systems site on the siteIQ Index. It also added another “Best Practice” rating in eCommerce, bringing its total up from two to three. However these accolades can’t hide a dismal ranking in site usability, which just happens to be what really counts this year. Just goes to show, just because your site is big doesn’t mean its usable.
3. Not surprisingly, Dell.com spent the last 12 months focused on core marketing and selling requirements: product marketing, online communities, call to action, and eCommerce. This has always been its tactical modus operandi. Overall improvements in corporate marketing areas are also evident—the most notable being a massive increase in its investor relations.
4. Oracle.com added site content and features across every area of the site—except support. Meanwhile usability scores stayed flat. However, the scoring trend shows that Oracle.com tends to do a more with less. In general, areas that had fewer content additions showed stronger usability scores than zones that went through major overhauls.
5. EMC.com’s story of the past year is largely one of treading water. With the exception of its tanking online support scores, all other areas received minor investments in content and features that resulted in minor upticks in its usability scores. Corporate and product marketing areas got the most attention. Corporate blogs made the biggest splash—from being a no-show in 2010 to a score of almost 60% in 2011.
6. In the past 12 months Intel.com introduced the barest glimmer of an eCommerce facility and corporate blogs area. These two additions alone are responsible for virtually all of Intel.com’s scoring increases over the past year. Most other categories registered less than 1% change in content or usability scoring. (1)

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(1) At the time of this post, Intel.com introduced a new Website that had not been launched before the siteIQ eBusiness Index Enterprise Systems evaluations. siteIQ Best Practice Case Studies detailing the Intel.com redesign launch will be available in the Best Practice Case Study Library.

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Real people, real voices, real time

While the SMB & mid-size market are using social media to just get their name out to the masses, large companies are learning how to use social media & communities in tandem for a whole new purpose. And it is literally changing the face of IT.

Large IT companies don’t need to get their name out there. I mean, who doesn’t know IBM, HP, Apple, or Dell? I would bet that even your grandmother knows the name of one of these companies, even if she doesn’t know how to use a mouse. So, aside from using social media as a slick press release system, how do large companies use these outlets to their advantage?

The death of the faceless organization: For eons IBM has had the reputation of the faceless organization. In fact, it became so faceless that the phrase “blue suits” was coined to describe it. Well, those days are over—welcome the people that are IBM. Over the past 12 months, IBM.com has started publishing the names & faces of the managers & executives who steer IBM—the company, the vision, and the products.  This initiative is supported by its online communities, Facebook pages, and Twitter personas. Now IBM customers & fans can engage with IBMers real time, and hear the perspectives of IBM employees on an ongoing basis. Now IBM has many, many faces & voices—and many of them wear golf shirts.

What goes around comes around: Large companies are made of people, and people want to hear what others are saying about them. This is where the social networking part of the equation comes into play. Forums like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter offer companies a view into the opinions, wants, and needs of its potential buyers and customers like never before. Just type IBM, HP, Dell, or Apple into the Facebook search engine and see how many pages show up. Or cruise these Websites for links back to their Facebook pages or Twitter profiles. These companies are learning that these forums are more than places to meet & greet. They are the largest-scale, lowest-cost testing forums and CSAT studies they could ever want.

To err is human to deliver spin control divine: Strategies that didn’t pan out. Products that don’t cut the mustard. Far reaching visions that never came to fruition. All the major companies have them, only now social media gives them the platforms to take wrong turns into new directions. Executives use blogs, Webcasts, and Podcasts to subtly shift their company’s visions to accommodate an ever changing business landscape. Meanwhile, product managers use blogs & forums to announce “new & improved features” (or in other words, “fixes for glitches”) in an upcoming product update—or in the worst of cases, fall on their swords. But no matter the topic, issue, or intent, all these social mediums give companies the flexibility to shift, craft, and hone their visions and image to align to current realities.

What do all of these strategies have in common? The power that social media gives people to change a company’s image, direction, and products—whether it is the company’s executives, product managers, customers, or prospects. The benefits of these strategies & forums are not limited to only the mighty few. Any company that is willing to use social media to open a dialog and listen to what people say can become the flexible and responsive organization that potential buyers and customers crave.

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: 

• Let ‘em eat cake. Some companies assume that all customers are created equal – and simply dump new customers into existing support and training zones. Think of it as the “Marie Antoinette (let ‘em eat cake)” strategy. In this scenario, enterprise customers don’t get the complex answers and training they need – and consumers get lost in messy support & training sites optimized for large accounts. In either case, it’s a bad behavior.

• Watch the birdie. Other companies decide to bolt market-specific support and training sites onto their existing venues. Think of this as the “Frankenstein” strategy. In this scenario, the company’s favored markets get center seat, while new markets and acquisitions get the “oh by the way” links in the right column, or at the bottom of support and training home pages. There’s nothing like an invisible link to tell “acquired”customers that they are second class citizens.

Both of these approaches tell new customers two important things. That (1) the vendor is more than willing to sell them products, but (2) won’t do the hard work necessary to deliver “after-sales” support and training optimized for their needs.

From our POV, two memos should be sent when a company decides to move up or down market.

The first should go to the marketing teams, giving them a heads up that they need to open and populate new product zones.

The second (and arguably most important) should be sent to the teams managing the company’s support and training zones warning them that “Marie Antoinette” and “Frankenstein” gambits don’t work. These teams need to put on their thinking caps, and recalibrate how they view and deliver their training and support sites.

Oracle.com has been the big Kahuna in the enterprise software industry for the past couple of years when it finally slipped past IBM’s Software Group site, which has been stuck in idle since early 2008. Then it decided to change the rules of its own game.

In 2009 Oracle bought Sun Microsystems in a quest to graduate into the business of selling hardware, software & services to the enterprise business set. Along with its red, white and black cap and gown, Oracle now gets to compete with the likes of IBM, HP and Dell. The question is, of course, how well does the combined Oracle.com & Sun.com sites perform against competitors that have been marketing & selling complex products online for well over a decade?

The answer is: not very well.

Oracle.com sets the pace in the software industry

In fact, Oracle.com’s graduation into the enterprise systems set means that it gets to start at the back of the pack. When these tough cookies are the issue, Oracle.com’s only claim to fame comes in the corporate marketing categories (big surprise). Meanwhile, HP.com, IBM.com & Dell.com beat Oracle.com’s product, services and industry marketing hands down. All three blow Oracle.com’s ecommerce off the map.

But now it gets to start at the back of the pack

While these results are likely to set off celebrations in some quarters, there’s a more sobering story here. Oracle.com inherited Sun.com, one of the most usable & effective sites in the IT industry. Rather than working this site’s good and best practices into its own landscape (and learning some invaluable lessons along the way), Oracle.com simply threw out the baby with the bathwater.

The net result is that Oracle.com + Sun.com has ended up to be much less than the sum of their parts – and that’s why Oracle.com gets to start at the back of the pack.

Related Reports: Website Rankings & Ratings: Enterprise Systems Websites, siteIQ Review: Oracle.com.

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

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 7^th and 8^th on the usability chart – and finish in the middle of the pack when all of the scores are tallied up (EMC.com ranks 12^th; Brocade ranks 14^th).

• 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 17^th place (out of 23 Websites).

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

Powerful search capabilities have hit a tipping point. Time to get them on your five point plan.

Once upon a time, search was a lot like socks. One of the basics you need to operate a well-dressed Website.

Search has also been pretty simple. Put out a box, fiddle with some “advanced search” explanations, spend some quality man-months meta-tagging mountains of content —  and let the rest take care of itself.

That is, until today.

Just in case you haven’t checked, search isn’t your father’s Oldsmobile anymore.  A new roster of features & capabilities are changing the rules.  Features like  . . .

• Adaptive keyword search that allows visitors to hone in on the right term before they hit the “go” button.

• Marketing optimized search that puts the right products front and center – along with the things you want visitors to do (like try or buy).

• Powerful post search filtering that quickly divides the wheat from the chaff.

• And last, but certainly not least, complete search results descriptions – instead of the truncated nonsense seen on most Websites these days.

This, of course, brings up two questions. Who does it now, and who does it best?

The first question can be answered by a couple of summary graphs from our new Search Master Plan.  (see more results here)

The second?  Depends on your personal preference. Here’s my ‘must see’ list.

• Apple.com: adaptive search, best in class descriptions, and great marketing optimized behaviors;
• Cisco.com: adaptive search & powerful post search filtering;
• Adobe.com: amazing marketing optimized search capabilities; and
• Dell.com: another post search filtering powerhouse.

Oh and one last thing. It’s time to start optimizing your search engine around your target audiences.  Like socks, you’re going to need more than one pair.

I can remember when flash mobs were a hot topic in the media; essentially a group of people with more time on their hands than good sense. I figured this phenomenon would go the way of the mosh pit.

Who knew that Dell.com would try and harness it as a form of online community behavior?

Here, I’m talking about Dell.com’s Storm Sessions which nestle within its Idea Storm community. In simple terms, this is the place where Dell throws out an idea or question for community members, starts the clock, and lets community members throw in their opinions.

Gabfests can be open for a month or a few days. Once the clock has run out, the session is closed, Dell reviews the comments, and shares how/when Dell will act on the information.

I’ve been watching Storm Sessions for about six months to see if this idea would gain any traction within Dell’s community ecosystem and gauge the kinds of issues and questions Dell would pose.

From one perspective, I’m cautiously impressed. Topics range from how to improve the site’s support zones, to mobile technologies desires, to if and how Dell’s corporate responsibility behaviors influence purchase decisions. In other words, information that most technology companies need to know.

Member participation?  Not so impressed. Generally, less than 20 members weigh in with opinions—which doesn’t even represent a rounding error when Dell’s massive community population is added up.

This light user footprint underscores the community behaviors we see across the IT Web. Most conversations are happening in support and developer forums. When the conversation turns to business topics, most members would rather lurk and listen – which doesn’t do much when you are trying to spark a dialog.

Despite these realities I wouldn’t count this idea out.  Digital flash mobs could be a very powerful way to spark conversations within technical communities and, if handled properly, deliver a wealth of next generation product insights. They also allow a company to “cap” the conversation, distill the results into essential points, and feed back results to the whole community.

From this perspective, don’t think of them as “flash mobs” with a purpose. Think of them as flash research that can pay huge dividends.