Trends for corporate websites in 2008 - part II

How can you incorporate Web 2.0 applications into your corporate website? How important is a corporate weblog? When should you enrich information? What is the added value of video? Look at best practices, read what your stakeholders expect and why you would have to follow these trends

Shift in goals for corporate websites

For the 2007 FD Henri Sijthoff Prize, Jungle Rating examined the quality of Dutch corporate websites for the fifth consecutive year. Jungle Rating sees five clear trends.

An increasing number of companies:

1. expose views and topical matters
2. establish an active dialogue with their visitors
3. enrich visitor experience through image and sound
4. consider individual stakeholders´ needs
5. use the corporate website as a medium to communicate their ‘brand’

In today’s article we discuss trend 2 and 3.

Trend 2. Establish an active dialogue with your visitors

The term ‘Web 2.0’ is also involved with corporate websites. Web 2.0 means that a website is no longer one-way traffic. On-line communication shifts from pure information supply to an on-line dialogue with and between visitors.

Although this trend is not yet represented everywhere, we still see that companies are increasingly using the corporate website to stimulate communication with stakeholders.

What do stakeholders expect?
The modern consumer uses the on-line messenger, calls via Skype and visits weblogs on a daily basis. Internet is a platform where both professional and private visitors come in contact. Visitors are also used to this.

Visitors also expect to be able to communicate with your company on your corporate website. Financial stakeholders want to give feedback or enter into a discussion with your company through a weblog or chat.

	“As a financial journalist, I’d like to be able to speak with the Investor Relations Manager quickly.”
	“I read about the strategy for 2008 on the website and have some critical questions for the CEO.”

Follow this trend?
It is critically important for companies to know what stakeholders think about the strategy, the business operations or the website. You receive valuable visitor input through polls, feedback functions and monthly chat sessions. This dialogue is already well established on commercial websites. You will have to take visitors’ views seriously on your corporate website as well.

Best Practices
H&M uses a poll to ask visitors about their preferences on sustainability reporting. H&M can then adapt its report to the specific needs of its stakeholders.
On its intranet, TNT has already started a dialogue with an important group of stakeholders: employees. They can chat with the CEO here. Soon, TNT would also like to offer investors the opportunity to chat with the CEO on the corporate website.
Customers help Tele Atlas to keep all their maps up-to-date. They indicate exactly what has changed on the maps. Teleatlas explicitly asks customers for their assistance: “No one knows your neighbourhood as well as you do”. And customers help each other this way.

Trend 3. Enrich visitor experience with image and sound

Corporate websites are still very text-oriented, certainly compared with retail websites. Nevertheless Jungle Rating sees the trend that companies are experimenting with image and sound to bring visual information to the visitor’s attention.

What do stakeholders expect?
The new generation of internet users is fully accustomed to image and sound on the web. They hardly read anymore and expect an expressive explanation and greater perception. The language of documentation is text; the language of the web should primarily be expressive. Corporate stakeholders also expect image and experience. They would like to experience the business, penetrate the organizational structure or experience a history, for example, with rich internet, flash or video.

	“Before I invest I’d like to have a good picture of this company. A company video is certainly valuable in that.”
	“I’d immediately like to experience the type of company I’m dealing with when I visit the corporate website.”

Follow this trend?
Naturally, facts and figures are important on a corporate website and your corporate website contains more content than a commercial website. But to truly captivate the visitor, the use of audio, video, and Flash, for example, is indispensable for effective communication of information that is sometimes dry as dust. This even enhances the user-friendliness of the website and the accessibility of the information.

Best Practices
With an interactive timeline (in Flash) Microsoft gives insight into the history of the company. Through the interactive character of this function, the visitor’s interest is further stimulated. It is nice to keep discovering new things. The message comes across better this way.
Siemens uses Google Earth to show company activities. How has Siemens influenced the city of New York? The visitor sees all Siemens applications: Smart Cards for patients in hospitals, or a technique to send mail more quickly. The visitor is challenged to look around at concrete applications of Siemens products and services.
Wal-Mart shows that Sustainability is truly important for the company. How does Wal-Mart influence its environment? The company clearly describes this in a dynamic infographic. How are products manufactured and packaged? How much energy does Wal-Mart consume and how does it minimize the impact on the climate? The visitor receives a dynamic answer to these questions.

This is our second article on the trends for corporate websites in 2008. Jungle Rating will discuss two more trends in its upcoming article.

What is your opinion about these trends?

Read more about the trends for corporate websites in 2008 in our previous article

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