Archive for services marketing

Oracle.com & HP.com marketing content | It’s all about me

By Kenna Dian · Comments (1)
Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011

Why Oracle.com and HP.com have a tough road ahead in the age of visitor-focused content

Oracle.com ContentI don’t talk about Oracle.com much. In fact, I speak about them so little that one would be lead to believe that I hold a grudge against them. Sure, they unceremoniously erased one of the best enterprise systems sites from the Internet–Sun.com. But, I won’t hold that against them. No, I don’t write about them much for one reason:

My Mother taught me if you don’t have something nice to say about someone, don’t say anything at all.

There’s a litany of issues I have with Oracle.com ranging from design to innovation (or rather a lack thereof). But today, my rant is about Oracle.com’s content. Read More→

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Categories : Design, Marketing, POV (point of view), Social Media & Social Networks, Strategy
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You only get one chance to make a bad impression.

By Kenna Dian · Comments (3)
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

Making a Bad Impression | Support SitesWhy do so many companies start with their support site?

Your support site is supposed to be the fount of knowledge for your customers—and a way to prove your excellence to prospects engaged in the buying process. It’s there to solve your customer’s problems. Speed them the information they need. Show them how to use your product. Make all of the wrongs with your product right.

Since happy customers are the cornerstone of successful companies, it would make sense that support sites would be laser focused on sending all of the right messages – right? Wrong. Most are actually sending plenty of wrong messages – and what they are really saying is startling. Read More→

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Categories : Marketing, Support
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Why Tech?

By Marty Gruhn · Comments (1)
Saturday, March 6th, 2010

A lot of people ask me why we focus on technology sites. Their reasoning is simple. There’s plenty of other interesting Websites out there with cooler designs and more doodads.

They’re probably right.

On the other hand, good (and even great) IT industry Websites have something to teach everyone.

They market and sell a complex range of products and software – plus the services that make them work. HP.com, for example, has over 10,000 SKUs. A small tech site can have upwards of 10,000 pages under management.

They reach and woo huge, diverse and demanding audiences.  Consumers who are shopping. CIO’s who are bonding. Project managers who are planning. Tech heads who are developing. Investors and journalists who influence the market’s pace. These sites will easily serve over 14 million visitors a month. When you have that many people knocking on your door, there’s not much time to make mistakes.

And that’s just for starters. Once the deal is done, tech sites must deliver mountains of product support information to cranky users 24/7. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, entitled extranets maintain relationships with huge global customers, and distributors and partners selling the company’s wares.

All things considered, tech sites have more moving parts and business strategies than anyone else on the Web. Amazon.com might have “fall off a log” e-commerce, but it doesn’t have to fix my egg cooker when the cord falls out.  My banking site does a great job of displaying my accounts in real time and letting me pay the bills, but it doesn’t have to deliver a gazillion software downloads a day, or contend with millions of developers who are fiddling with the product.

That’s why we focus on technology sites — and why you should too.

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Categories : POV (point of view), Strategy
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Reseller sites give Dell.com a run for its (e-selling) money

By Nicole Wallens · Comments (0)
Saturday, May 17th, 2008

Ever since we made the decision to add reseller sites to our eBusiness Index roster for 2008, I’ve been curious to see how they would perform against some of the IT industry’s selling powerhouses, including HP.com, Dell.com, and IBM.com. I wasn’t curious about their competitive performance, per se. Reseller sites are significantly smaller than their enterprise-class counterparts, even though they sell many of the same products. That automatically means their overall rankings will be lower. What I was curious about is how well these reseller sites would stack up based on their usability.

Insight.com and Newegg.com both receive scores that place them in a league with IT industry leaders -- and well ahead of one of their major partners -- HP.com

Insight.com and Newegg.com both receive scores that place them in a league with IT industry leaders — and well ahead of one of their major partners — HP.

When I rolled up the first quarter 2008 usability numbers this week, a couple of interesting facts jumped out. First, Newegg.com’s product marketing score is nearly 71%, which puts it on par with the eBusiness Index average (71.38%) — and places it in close proximity to enterprise systems heavyweights in the effectiveness rankings. Second, and more important, all three reseller sites — Newegg.com, CDW.com, and Insight.com — earn e-selling-related usability scores that are well above the eBusiness Index average, and actually rival those of the ultimate online channel — Dell.com.

Admittedly, these are two bright spots in an otherwise checkered usability landscape for these companies.  Read More→

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Categories : eSelling
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The importance of being well rounded

By Nicole Wallens · Comments (2)
Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

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→

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Categories : Design, Website Rankings
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Professional services marketing | It’s all about ME!

By Marty Gruhn · Comments (0)
Tuesday, February 6th, 2007

One look at professional services Website’s usability scores show that they’ve been losing ground in 2006.  That, of course, prompted us to ask the obvious question: why?  After spending some time on these sites, we found the answers. Put simply, “It’s all about me!” content behaviors and services marketing architectures that are as clear as mud are taking their toll on professional services sites’ overall effectiveness for visitors.

CapGemini and EDS provide plenty of press releases and 'thought leadership' articles, but nary a link that allows visitors to view services based on business issue or need

CapGemini and EDS provide plenty of press releases and 'thought leadership' articles, but nary a link that allows visitors to view services based on business issue or need

Not sure what we mean by “It’s all about me!” content behaviors? To see these sins in action, point your browser to the home pages of the corporate Websites operated by EDS and Capgemini, or take a look at the screenshots on the left. On these pages, you’ll find plenty of company press releases, news stories and “thought leadership” articles—but nary a link that allows visitors to find or view services based on their business issues or needs.

What’s more, IBM Global Services, which boasts a home page that allows visitors to navigate into the site based on business issue, industry or service type, presents an “IBM Global Business Services” page that ranks as the poster child for these behaviors and—dare we say it—would make Paris Hilton look shy (see the screenshots below). Read More→

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Categories : Marketing, Strategy
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