Archive for juniper.net

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→

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Categories : POV (point of view), Support
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Don’t Miss/Don’t Bother | IBM.com’s Mega-menu Launch

By Marty Gruhn · Comments (1)
Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

IBM.com's Home Page Mega-menu 2011In this Don’t Miss/Don’t Bother we take IBM.com’s new mega-menu for a spin (or two).

Fair warning, this post is long!

IBM.com has launched revised home and solutions pages that feature the next major piece in its evolution: a new take on mega-menus. Not surprisingly, IBM.com has put its own spin on what is fast becoming an industry norm. In this Don’t Miss/Don’t Bother we weigh in on the pros and cons of IBM.com’s latest design. Read More→

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Categories : Design, Navigation, POV (point of view), Usability, Website Launches
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Launches | The Age of the Home Page

By Kenna Dian · Comments (0)
Monday, June 6th, 2011

Who is updating their home page, how are they doing it—and why it might not matter.

2011 is turning out to be the age of the home page. We’re seeing updates in record numbers– and some designs are actually breaking new ground. On the other hand, few of these designs are actually making it down to lower levels of the site—which is a big no-no in our book.

I’ll leave that point for a future rant. Meanwhile, let’s take a look at who’s producing these new home pages, the important design points and strategies they bring to the party—and explore the age-old question: why only the home page?

I’ll start with the “who” and “how” and leave my humble opinions for the end. Read More→

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Categories : Design, POV (point of view), Usability, Website Launches
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The Envelope, Please! The best of the best

By Marty Gruhn · Comments (0)
Thursday, July 8th, 2010

In case you missed my last posts, this is the time when we announce our eBusiness Index rankings. Here’s a bird’s eye view of the Websites that set the standards in the IT industry.

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

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Categories : Website Rankings
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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.

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Categories : Website Rankings
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What Juniper.net knows that everyone else is missing

By Marty Gruhn · Comments (6)
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Juniper.net is pursuing an interesting strategy which I suspect most companies have missed. Last year, it did two things.

It launched a completely new Website in February.

Then it executed a wholesale update in October.

That wouldn’t be important, except for one thing. The October refresh was executed across the entire Website. From top to bottom. From stem to stern.

This, as it turns out, introduces a new design strategy into the mix. Until now, most Website teams have taken an incremental improvement approach, limiting updates and innovations to certain areas of their sites. A new home page; revamped product marketing zones; or a new look and feel for the top three layers of a site. The net result is that users have to re-learn the site every time they move between zones.

In contrast, Juniper.net’s approach is iterative. It’s not interested in hitting solid singles. It goes for the home run.

There are a couple of things to remember here. Read More→

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Categories : Design, Strategy, Usability
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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→

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Categories : Design, Navigation, Usability, Web 2.0
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Does your sales force need a kick in the pants?

By Marty Gruhn · Comments (5)
Monday, March 9th, 2009

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→

Comments (5)
Categories : eSelling, Marketing
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