4 tips for a sustainable corporate website

In this article, Jungle Rating provides you with inspiration for reviving your online sustainability section, and the corporate website in general. Learn about 'dancing data', learn how to write a clear-cut case study and find out how to involve stakeholders in your online communications process.

In this newsletter, Jungle Rating provides you with inspiration for reviving your online sustainability section, and the corporate website in general. Learn about ‘dancing data’, learn how to write a clear-cut case study and find out how to involve stakeholders in your online communications process. 
As we concluded in our preliminary sustainability research, stakeholders increasingly expect to find sustainability performance data online. In case you do not mention any sustainability performance data on your corporate website yet:

 

• Create a sustainability performance (key figures) overview of preferably more than two years in the sustainability section of your website. Use the data which already are available in your sustainability report.
• The next step would be to provide an integrated overview of sustainability performance data and targets. The bi-weekly Best Practice, BHP Billiton, shows an excellent example of how to do so.

Very few companies yet have interactive charting tools, with which visitors can make their own analysis. Our next example, ‘dancing data’, which we have not seen on corporate websites yet, might be an excellent tool to revive you sustainability and financial data section. 

2. Be the first to present ‘dancing’ data 

At the end of February, Frankwatching, a Dutch new media weblog, showed the subsequent example of what he called ‘dancing data’. Gapminder, a Swedish, software company, has developed this so-called ‘trendalizer’ tool, with which historical data come alive. In this example, a country’s income per capita is plotted against life expectancy data. When clicking play, the presentation starts with 1970 data and runs through the seventies, eighties, nineties and the early years of this millennium.

See the data dancing 

The 17th of March, Dominic Jones mentioned on his IR daily weblog that Google had acquired Gapminder. He stated that with the rise of XBRL, such software could become very useful for financial information. Might this be a trend? Yes, Jungle Rating says. Most companies yet have ten-year overviews of their financial and sustainability data. Allowing visitors to select and view an interactive presentation of all sorts of historical data certainly adds to the understanding of information. Not just tables or static graphs anymore, but a meaningful analysis of historical developments and trends. 

3. How to disclose case studies? 

Sustainability related case studies enable organisations to demonstrate that sustainability is a continuous and integral part of their business. Many companies provide an overview of case studies within their sustainability section, but case studies often lack tangibility. How to write a good case study? One that provides visitors with a clear-cut understanding of the why’s, how’s and what’s of the various projects your company undertakes? Here is a checklist:

• introduce the project (where, what)
• provide insight in the reason why your company undertakes the project (why)
• provide insight in your company’s solution for the problem (how)
• formulate concrete project targets (e.g. 10% waste reduction at Dutch plant)
• show results (and potentially identify pitfalls from which your company has learned)

4. Engage in a dialogue with your stakeholders 

Stakeholder dialogues often concern the determination of policy, strategy and key performance indicators for a company’s sustainability performance. H&M, a Swedish clothing company, shows that stakeholders can also be consulted for online reporting processes. H&M does not know yet in what format (PDF, image-based or HTML) it will publish its sustainability report this year. Within the CSR section of the H&M website, visitors can choose between five ways of publishing the report (see screenshot below).

 

Visit H&M website to vote for your preferred reporting format 
The results show that visitors prefer an online HTML-version of the CSR report (apart from the financial report), and a PDF version as well. But, only 2% prefers a CD-ROM with the report on it. This poll enables H&M to select the most appropriate reporting formats and satisfy its stakeholders, without having to conduct an ‘expensive’ online survey.

Reading suggestion: Check our January newsletter, for a recap of the pros and cons of the online reporting formats (PDF, image-based and HTML).

Next newsletter: online recruitment

In our next newsletter we will focus on e-recruitment. In case, you have any questions suggestions or remarks on this topic, please contact us or fill in the form below and we will hopefully be able to provide you with an answer on the 10th of April.

 

1. Provide online sustainability data 

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