At the moment mine include Slideshare and http://www.digg.com/, and the movie review site http://www.rottentomatoes.com/. Looking at the most popular ones in this list, it's clear most of our top choices tend to be sites that are online destinations only, rather than online sites of major real-world brands.
So what about corporate web sites? What makes a great company site, and how do we develop these to become as interesting and useful as our other online favourites? Below are some of the evolutions that have been happening in corporate web site development, changes worth thinking about when looking at your next web project:
- Transaction sites become a journey not just a sales destination: In the early years when the Web first took off, over 10 years ago, most companies wanted transactional e-commerce sites. Many of these didn't survive, but the ones that did like http://www.ebay.com/ and http://www.amazon.com/ did so by realising they had to do more than include a product listing, sales engine and payment system. By providing everything that different types of customers wanted on their sales journey - from personalised recommendations, real product reviews and places just to hang out and have fun - these sites changed the idea that to sell hard, you had to hard-sell.
These days traditional industries like banks and airlines, as well as many B2B business sites, are learning these lessons and radically transforming the purpose and architecture of their company sites. Check out http://www.easyjet.com/ for a good example of how corporate transactional sites are taking a different approach.
- Consumer content and engagement rule: For years companies have said 'customer first', but have done the opposite online. Trying to navigate through these brochure ware sites was a nightmare, so bogged down were they in product and sales information. Truth is, many still are. But a few years ago this started to change, as sites began to include blogs, web boards, reviews and places for customers to share with other users. Marketers realised that unless they made sites more accessible and relevant and engaging - people would simply go elsewhere.
The title of this article says it all - the future of the corporate site involves people. That means every industry is transforming their approach and including the user and communities in their plans, and making the sites a rich and interactive experience. For example travel sites like this one in New York, financial sites like Mint, iconic brand sites like http://www.apple.com/, insurance sites like YouCovered and agency sites like this from http://www.leoburnett.com/ (Sorry, couldn't help the plug!)
- Company sites get a micro-focus: One of the biggest changes in the last few years has been the shift from the all-purpose corporate site to the product + campaign specific micro-site. People don't have time to wander around your big corporate site trying to find what they're looking for. These new sites allow companies to focus on the needs of a particular audience and drive traffic directly from the relevant campaigns.
Micro-sites such as these from Audi, Coke and this slightly naughty one from Lynx Effect show just how much you can give customers, when you focus on a single idea. Interestingly, this has also made for better corporate sites as well, allowing them to communicate with less clutter and more customer value.
- The web site gets personal and mobile: The future of digital is to go where customers are, not build it and expect them to come. And the experience will be different for every user. This quote from the future of corporate websites says it all: "A webpage will not start with the assumption anymore: I don’t know who is coming and therefore try to solve everybody’s needs, but that it will work with a lot of technologies to provide everybody a very personal real-time user experience, to deliver him what he needs." And it will do this as much on your mobile device, as anywhere else.
The growth of WAP mobile internet sites along with introduction of 3G and broadband internet services in Thailand will start to see the transformation of people's internet habits to more mobile computing. In Japan, since 2006 more people have been accessing the web through cell phones than through PCs. Pretty soon we'll all need to be developing exciting mobile web solutions, like this one for Nike.
These developments are transforming the company web site, with some truly fantastic work, and much of it from Asia. If you have a chance, spend a few minutes looking at the latest and greatest sites from your industry via the Webby Awards for 2008 . Seeya next week.
No comments:
Post a Comment