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: Oracle.com
Usability & Effectiveness: IBM Software Group
Content, Features & Capabilities: Oracle.com

With two companies performing complete site overhauls–and one nudging its site into place over the past year—rankings were bound to change in 2011. So which sites were the major movers and shakers over the past 12 months? Which ones are the sites to watch through 2012? Here’s the rundown from first place to last:

1. This year Oracle.com retained its title as the content “big foot” on the siteIQ eBusiness Index (1)—and this footprint worked to deliver it the first place ranking. On the other hand, a broader look at the enterprise software industry shows that Oracle.com doesn’t have any room to rest on its laurels. Now it has CA.com gunning to be an enterprise software Goliath and IBM Software is upping the usability bar. To compete in the future, Oracle.com needs to up its game.
2. Incremental change was the name of the game at CA.com. That’s not to say there were any major splashes or “ta da’s”. Just a series of re-launches and endless tweaking that ended up creating a noticeable transformation. On the other hand, one look at CA.com’s scores and rankings shows that change isn’t always a good thing. CA.com lost its #1 usability ranking (dropped to third)—and is the only site that registered a net decrease in its usability & effectiveness score.
3. IBM Software’s latest site redesign is part of IBM.com’s Centennial revamp that is trying to change all of the rules. Here, The IBM Software team’s hard work—and CA.com’s tumble—delivered it the first place usability & effectiveness ranking and the only Good Practice rating in the group. The site’s renovation also delivered more content & features—but the real story is the site’s impressive string of 13 “Good Practice” usability ratings. The fact that its online communities are now visible on the site didn’t hurt either.
4. We didn’t add Symantec.com to the enterprise software mix this year because it’s selling large, complex software solutions. We added it because the enterprise systems “big wigs” are continuing to move down market with SMB and SaaS solutions that rely on the kinds of marketing and eCommerce capabilities that have long been a Symantec.com forte. So how did Symantec.com fare when compared to its mega software brethren? On the one hand, there’s no doubt that Symantec’s content & features are the size of a newt (relatively speaking). On the other hand, Symantec.com proves that small can be mighty. It usability & effectiveness debuted at second place—which proves that it knows how to capitalize on every single asset.
5. In April the German giant SAP.com unveiled a ginormous make-over that is still a work in progress. But if early scores are any indication, this new site is likely to give other sites a run for their money. Within a month of launch, this partial implementation was already moving the site’s content and usability & effectiveness scoring needles in the right direction. It ranks fifth to be sure—but its strong showing tells us that SAP.com will be a serious competitor within the next 12 months.
6. SAS.com’s scores paint a picture of a site that is running hard to stay in place. Here, substantial corporate marketing-class additions and improved communities visibility delivered the largest increase in overall content, features & capabilities scores—but burning the content midnight oil didn’t move its usability & effectiveness scores one whit. It ends up in 6th place (that’s dead last) with a 50.96% score and two stars (below average).

There’s plenty more rankings & ratings – and our take on the evaluation results – in our new Enterprise Software Report.

(1) Note: Oracle.com’s hardware product areas (a.k.a. Sun Microsystems hardware & systems) were not reviewed for this industry segment.

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Recently Marty Gruhn and I put IBM.com’s new mega-menu under the microscope and the results were…well…less than stellar. But a couple accidental slips of my cursor exposed some other new designs and approaches that are well worth taking a spin around the IBM.com site.

Navigation first, content second. If you click on one of the artfully hidden “all” links in IBM.com’s mega-menu (i.e. “all solutions” or “all services”) you will land on a page that is so simply designed and elegant that you will think you landed on a different site. You didn’t. This is the highest of the high levels of the new IBM.com. Sophisticated design aside, what is most notable is how the page is focused solely on navigating to the rest of the site. Broad, big-bucket links take visitors to more specific information, while the content only sets the context.

Introducing the mini-menu. With the popularity of micro-site Website architectures on the rise, moving around the dot com sites is becoming a problem. Some micro-site teams don’t want the big bulky navigation panel across the top of their pages*, while others want to design something that fits their own artistic vision. Enter the mini-menu. This design zips up the highest level of the global navigation panel into a tidy drop-down menu. In IBM.com’s case, it is activated by moving the cursor over the logo—another stroke of genius.

So, do these couple of accolades mean we are changing our stance on IBM.com’s mega-menu? Nope. Today it still has the same usability problems it did then. But one bad apple doesn’t spoil the bunch.

In fact, I highly recommend taking the top 2 to 3 levels of this site for a serious ride. If you bounce around long enough, you can begin to catch glimpses of the new IBM.com emerging. And if they actually pull off what it looks like they are shooting for, the new IBM.com will be a work of art—and a site to follow.

*See SAP.com’s new site (and read our post about the latest launch), some areas of Cisco.com, and the granddaddy of mega-micro-sites, Microsoft.com.

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.

Juniper.net: An end-to-end refresh, plus a savvy F1. Design-wise, Juniper.net’s boasting a more monochromatic color palette these days that’s carried across the entire site. This attention to detail isn’t much of a surprise.  Juniper.net is one of few sites that is persistently refreshed from top to bottom and end to end.

But the real feather in Juniper.net’s cap is its deft F1 feature, which features its CTO in a series of inline videos discussing the issues and questions important to potential buyers. Think of it as the first home page that actually tells a complete story.

Level3.com: A top to bottom redo–but the home page is a bridge too far.  Level3.com’s claim to fame is actually a complete Website redesign—different layout, colors, and content approach.

Like Juniper.net, the new Level3.com home page F1 centers on addressing common questions—with a huge focus on differentiating Level3 from its competitors.  How it achieves this, however, is different. Instead of using execs or employees (a la Juniper.net) Level3.com opts for three fictitious characters who step in to discuss questions selected by the visitor. The feature is professionally done, but doesn’t feel as authentic as Juniper.net’s.

HP.com: Watching an interesting design wander off the rails. I wrote about HP.com’s new and evolving home page in our most recent Don’t Miss/Don’t Bother column, so I won’t bore you with a second rendition of who shot John.  With two Don’t Bother votes, there’s plenty to learn from HP.com’s home page launch.

SAP.com: A home page design that is as revolutionary as it is attractive. This re-design tips all the previous home page and Website architecture designs on their heads.  To learn more about this launch, read my blog about how SAP.com’s home page re-defines Website architecture. Let’s just say it’s not for the faint of heart—and will require a complete site revamp to pull it off.

IBM.com: Playing catch up, but moving in the right direction. IBM.com’s latest home page redesign is a bit like watching a launch in slow motion.  This transformation started this spring with the addition of a fat (and I mean fat) footer, a slightly darker palette, savvy graphics, and an inline mega menu that allows visitors to drill down into the Smarter Planet zone (read my POV on this great zone here).  Last week, we saw IBM.com’s take on the mega-menu revolution.  My POV?  Eh. Check our latest Don’t Miss/Don’t Bother review.

Microsoft.com: Back to the future.  Microsoft.com’s new home page is interesting. The layout has changed, but the colors remain the same—which makes it look like a lightweight redesign. It’s not.

In a turn away from the trends, all mega-menu style navigation is out—and static (pull down) navigation is in.  Also new:  site information organized in colorful decks instead of floating in space.  Not better or worse—just different.

Adobe.com: Variations on the theme clobbers consistency.  Adobe.com’s new design keeps its graphically rich heritage, but does away with the impressive flash animations. Is this a response to the recent backlash against Flash, or just Adobe.com maturing? Hard to tell.

Other changes include a darker color palette and a page shift from the left to the center. The latter may seem like no big deal, but it is affecting overall site consistency due to lower-level pages that still display a flush-left design.

The Gist

So, why are we seeing so many new home pages? Well, when you can’t afford a facelift, buy some better makeup.  But here’s the catch. A redo might give you a feel good boost and bragging rights with your execs, but if your lower-level pages are aging badly this isn’t money well spent.

Why?  Because a home page is only a fraction of the user equation.  In the real world, most of your visitors spend their quality time inside your site—wandering through those aging designs, navigation structures, and dreadful content you are ignoring.  That’s not the promise these cool new home pages are selling. Which means you just invested in an expensive game of bait and switch.

What would you think if someone told you they could eliminate the first 3 layers of your site? The blizzard of landing pages. Semi-redundant content. Pesky page load times. All of it.

Sounds impossible?  It’s not.

Last week SAP.com launched a monster redesign that promises to tip many rules on their head. Here’s four reasons to pay attention:

A new home page design & navigation. Believe it or not, SAP.com has been at the forefront of home page design trends for years.

When conventional designs put primary features in boxes, SAP.com made them the entire background. When mega-menus hit the airwaves, SAP.com invented the navigation mega-pane.

True to form, its latest design doesn’t introduce a totally new concept. It just executes an existing concept on a much larger, bolder scale.

Welcome to the pane-in-pane effect. The magic that totally changes the conventional Website architecture rules lies in SAP.com’s page-in-page mega-menus. This design allows visitors to browse two, and in some cases, three layers deep—without ever leaving the home page. Think of the implications. A world without long, boring landing pages. Navel gazing blather. Off the reservation designs. Long download times.

A peek into the future. One look at the site will tell you that the SAP.com site is still a work in progress, but you can see the end game in a couple of areas, such as the On-Demand CRM for Small and Medium Enterprises or On Demand Sales products. Here, SAP.com is laying the foundation for product marketing zones which operate as their own mini-sites. Sure, owners will have to color inside the lines and play inside the templates, but they will also get a clean, contemporary look and feel, plus control over their media, content, and message.

Don’t try this at home. Although SAP.com’s design is revolutionary and has some fantastic upsides, this approach isn’t for the faint of heart.  You need at least four things to pull this off—and none of them are optional.

1. Full buy-in from your boss, your boss’s boss, and stakeholders.  The first two will be easy.  The third? Not so much.
2. Execute centralized, iron-clad governance. A gulag mentality will probably work best.
3. Constantly monitor for rogue behaviors that quickly clobber the user experience. This is easier when you invest in #4.
4. Invest in a CMS system. If you don’t, you’ll go blind trying to chase stakeholders around.

SITEIQ VIEW | When you really examine the nuts and bolts of the new SAP.com site, you’ll see that it isn’t doing anything that we haven’t seen before. What sets it apart is that it’s taken a set of great ideas—and then reworked them to best effect. Used them on a grander scale. Pushed them a little farther.  Packaged them a little differently.  In the end, that’s what it takes to create a unique user experience — and a best in class Website.

The case study and video that details this re-design are available in the siteIntelligence Best Practice Library.

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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.

It was a bit of a lark, to be sure. And like many of our larks, it delivered some interesting results.

To see why, take a peek at this graph that illustrates how the communities operated by seven leading IT companies fare based on 32 usability metrics.

First, the good news. SAP and Citrix deliver pretty much what is expected. The bad news for Citrix is that, at a 54% usability score, its community doesn’t look very usable – and it isn’t. At the other end of the spectrum, SAP’s communities appear to be the most usable – and (dismal look and feel aside) they are.

Next, let’s look at the sites that exceeded expectations. That would be Dell. My tour of the community delivered Dell an average 69.1% usability score. At 70.8%, Kenna’s power drive says that Dell’s communities actually deliver slightly more than expected.

This leaves us with the communities that are like an unfortunate blind date. Among these, EMC and Oracle fared worst.

My tour of EMC’s communities delivered good, but not great, usability results (62.4%), but Kenna’s deep dive shows that once you get past the flash, this community is almost unusable.

Oracle also seemed to be a reasonably usable venue if you are just lurking around, and my usability scores averaged out to 60.8%. By the time Kenna finished rambling through the site’s inconsistent behaviors and technical problems, she thought 54% was a gift.

The good news is that everyone can learn from the steps and mis-steps of these leading IT vendors.

siteIQ clients have access to our study results in a new siteIQ SnapShot report, Global Websites | Key Metrics | Language Compliance. For those who don’t have access to the siteIntelligence Research Center, I thought I’d share some of the more interesting things we learned.

The Big Picture

The IT industry has come a long way since we last looked at the global landscape in 2005. Then, language compliance in key markets, such as Latin America and Asia Pacific, were hit and miss at best. Today, these regions stand out as having some of the strongest language compliant Websites. Among the companies studied, Dell’s Latin American regional sites are the venues to watch.

In a reprise of our 2005 results, Oracle retains the crown as the worst global language performer.

On the other end of the spectrum, the emerging market du jour – Eastern Europe – is a language compliance disaster. Here, companies are following a number of less-than-effective strategies.

Those that deliver sites in Russian appear to be unaware that this language is spoken in less than half of the 29 countries in this region. Others, like Oracle, fall back on English-based Websites in a region where English is not a first, second or an official language. None of the companies we studied “get it”, but if you want to see the best of a bad lot, spend some time observing Eastern European sites operated by IBM.

Among the companies we studied, Dell, IBM, and Cisco stand out as good-to-excellent performers across the globe.

• Dell achieves this distinction by having a massive global footprint (sites in 166 countries), an intricate and highly effective regional schemas – and also pads its overall score by having the best Latin America performance across the board.

• IBM, with sites in 98 countries, is actually the provisional leader in our minds, due to a strategy that delivers content (at minimum) in the target language at the top four levels of sites. IBM also gets our vote for leadership because it is the only vendor in our group that operates zero (yes, zero) sites that are not language compliant.

• Cisco (75 sites) also gets our ‘good housekeeping’ seal of approval by pursuing a strategy that, on average, delivers either perfect language compliance or compliance at the top four levels.

In a reprise of our 2005 results, Oracle retains the crown as the worst global language performer. Over a third of Oracle’s sites are not language compliant and it appears that the company has never seen an English-based global Website it didn’t like. If you want to see language ‘bait and switch’ in action, Oracle is the company to watch.

The Method to the Madness

When all of the scores were tallied, we found that four distinct global language strategies are in play around the globe.

The most effective is the “Almost Perfect” strategy executed by sites that deliver virtually all content (except support) in one of the country’s top three prime or official languages (as determined by data provided by the CIA FactBook).  Although the random piece of content may be delivered in English, these sites clearly focus on delivering most marketing, channel, corporate, and promotional information to visitors in their lingua franca. Just over half (51.3%) of the sites we studied fall into this category—but when you factor out English-speaking countries, this drops to 22.8% of non-English speaking sites. In other words, relatively few companies operate perfect, non-English-based global sites.

The next effective is the “Largely Compliant” strategy which is observed on 14.8% of the sites. These sites deliver the vast majority of content in the country language, but rely on US or English-based content up to 20% of the time (we would have preferred 10% but 20% ended up as the logical break point). Of the 700+ sites reviewed, only 14.8% were deemed to be following a ‘Largely Compliant” strategy.  The company that relies most on this strategy is Cisco (48 sites or 64% of its total global footprint).

When you get to product detail, however, you are on your own unless you speak English. Of the sites reviewed, about a fifth (19.6%) fall into the “top four levels” category.

We dubbed the next strategy the “Top Four Levels” gambit, which reflects that these sites tend to deliver the top four levels of the site in the target language, and then link visitors to the company’s U.S. site content at lower levels. Typically, these top four levels consist of a language-compliant home page and features, reseller and channel information, product gateway pages, press releases and promotions and occasionally, top level product pages. When you get to product detail, however, you are on your own unless you speak English. Of the sites reviewed, about a fifth (19.6%) fall into the “top four levels” category. Here, SAP is most likely to pursue this strategy (53.1%), followed by IBM (33.7% of all sites).

Finally, we have the least effective strategy across the globe—the “Non-Compliant or Bait and Switch” strategy. These sites give every IT vendor a bad name (to put it mildly). They either deliver language compliant home page links that lead to English content—or don’t even try to deliver a site in the country’s target language. (This, of course, begs the question: if they don’t speak English, what’s the point?) The good news is that only 14.2% of global sites we studied exhibit this egregious behavior. Among the companies we studied, Oracle gets the prize (35.9% of sites) and Sun Microsystems gets an honorable mention.

Words to the Wise

Even the best funded Website teams struggle . . . what should the less well-heeled do?

When all of the numbers are tallied up, it’s obvious that even the best funded IT vendors (note: the companies we studied spend well over $2 billion annually on their Website operations) struggle to deliver perfect global language behaviors. Given that, what should the less well-heeled do?

• Avoid List Envy. Ignore where your competitors (or leading IT companies) are operating global Websites. Just because a company has a footprint in a country doesn’t mean it operates an effective Website. To avoid playing follow the loser, map your global Website strategy to your own channel strategy—and then prioritize countries based on their IT spending, the number of Internet users in each country, and  the country’s real language requirements. If you can’t support the site in the user’s local language, put this country at the bottom of your list.

• Think Regional. Some of the best performers build their excellence on well-crafted regional language sites. Dell’s Latin American sites—which are built around country-specific home pages backed by a Spanish-based regional site—is a classic example of a regional schema that works. Regions that are prime for regional language designs are Latin America, the Caribbean and about 10 countries in Eastern Europe.

What do you think of the global Websites operated by IT companies? Sound off in comments.

Web 2.0 is alot like Botox. Expertly applied with pinpoint precision, Web 2.0 can smooth out a Website’s wrinkles and create a better (even great) look and feel.  Slather it on willy-nilly, however, and you’ll end up with gridlock – and a very, very ugly result

I’m at a conference that is a brain trust for Web 2.0 and its ramifications inside corporations – and for public .com Websites.  Ajax, wikis, gadgets, widgets, logs, podcasts and long tails whiz by as speakers extol the virtues and opportunities that Web 2.0 will create.

I’m reminded of the mania surrounding the dotcom era. This is more restrained – a bit more focused – but I still hear the strains of ‘it’s a brave new world’ in the background.

Don’t get me wrong. Web 2.0 is going to change – even revolutionize — how IT sites communicate with visitors and customers. That said, a word of caution is also in order. Web 2.0 is alot like Botox. Expertly applied with pinpoint precision, Web 2.0 can smooth out a Website’s wrinkles and create a better (even great) look and feel.  Slather it on willy-nilly, however, and you’ll end up with gridlock – and a very, very ugly result.

At this point, it seems that the IT Web is dividing in to two Web 2.0 camps: those that intend to be early adopters – and those that are piddling around to very little effect. Of the first set, Cisco.com, Sun.com and IBM.com stand out as early adopters. Of these, Cisco.com is currently the site to watch.

So what should you pay attention to as you navigate the Web 2.0 waters?  Here’s a couple of thoughts:

From an IT Website perspective, Web 2.0 is about three things: community, content—and the technologies that support them. IT-related Web 2.0 pioneers know that Web 2.0 will work best when sites are carefully organized around tightly-focused communities of interest. (To see one reason why, read a wikipedia discussion of long tails at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail.)  Vendor-provided content within these community zones will be provided in traditional formats (html, pdf) and in new media formats such as interactive video, blogs and podcasts. From this perspective, Web 2.0 looks very much like an extension of current industry and audience strategies – plus new ways to communicate the same things.

The real revolution, however, lies in two other areas: allowing users to organize site content based on their own interests or preferences (e.g. tagging), and providing ways for the community to author its own content on the site (e.g. user reviews, user/expert blogs and even wikis).

IBM.com allows visitors to tag content by click on the "Add to My Interests" link . . .

To see some early examples of the power of tagging, surf over to IBM.com and check out the ‘My IBM/My Interests’ links on the home page or take a peek at the ‘Add to My Interests’ feature. When you finish perusing the IBM approach, surf over to HP.com’s support area and test drive its support-related tagging efforts (see screen shot below).

Not interested in the systems business? Then take a gander at SAP.com’s new SMB zone at http://www.sap.com/smallbusiness. This site offers a best practice-class example of tagging at its best – and boasts one of the industry’s most effective SMB designs.

And what about user authored content?  That’s the concept that is sure to turn most corporate and product marketing organizations on their ears. It’s one thing to allow developers and users to share technical or support information. It’s another to allow this behavior to creep into product & services marketing zones. After all, marketing in the IT industry has always been about spinning the story, controlling the message — and the occasional damage control. Allowing potential buyers free access to user opinions about the vendor’s products before purchase is enough to send any marketing organization into a tailspin.

. . while SAP.com deploys a persistent "My Saved Resources" panel

But one company’s cultural crisis is often another company’s opportunity to innovate.  Consider Sun.com, which has already started the ball down the field. To see how, surf over to Sun.com’s StarOffice product marketing page (http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/index.jsp) and take a close look at its new User Review feature. Then start worrying about what will happen to your site when these kinds of two-way prospect-to-user dialogs start taking off.

Stay Tuned

These examples are, of course, just the tip of the Web 2.0 iceberg and there are more Web 2.0 activities on the IT Web than I can wedge into this limited space today. Stay tuned. We’ve already begun compiling Web 2.0 best and worst practices – and have added a growing roster of Web 2.0 criteria to every siteIQ BenchMark. If you are a siteIQ Website Assessment Program client you can track how you and your competitors fare today. In the meantime, stay tuned for more Web 2.0 examples and cross-industry requirements as this revolution gathers steam.