Top Corporate web sites 'Could Do Better'

By Alun Williams

Posted on 6 Jan 2003 at 15:54

FTSE-100 Web sites are still 'wallowing in mediocrity' says new Web study.

How usable are the Web sites of the UK's top 100 companies (aka the FTSE 100)? Not very, seems to be the answer of Interactive Bureau, a London-based design company. It has just published the second annual Review of the UK's Top 100 Companies' Corporate Web Sites.

One in five of the companies do not explain on their home pages what they actually do, forty per cent 41% provide no facility to search their sites for information and a third do not give their share price, or bury it away deep within the site.

There are signs, Interactive Bureau says, that the general level of quality is improving. It seems that twenty-eight companies now rate in the 'good' or 'very good' categories for their home pages, as against only nine last year.

According to the report, however, the other 72 'vary from needing some substantial attention in one area or another, to needing a lot of urgent attention, to being irredeemably bad and in a state where they should be thrown away.'

While a third of the sites have been re-designed in the last year, eight are apparently worse than they were before.

'This is very much a "Yes... but" report this year,' said Adrian Porter of Porter Research, the company that carried out the survey.

He sees lots of room for improvement: 'Yes, standards have gone up. Yes, a third of the FTSE-100 companies have redesigned their sites, which shows they are beginning to take the medium seriously. Yes, some of those redesigns, are now among the best. But the majority are still wallowing in mediocrity. Last year's report was seen by many industry commentators as an appropriate wake-up call to our top companies that they needed to address the inadequacies of their Internet presence. It appears that for many of our top companies the call fell on deaf ears.'

Which companies have the best sites? In top place is the National Grid with a score of 86 per cent. This is followed by Six Continents (84.75 per cent) and Kingfisher (79.75 per cent). Sainsbury and Pearson were joint fourth with a ranking of 77.75 per cent.

The bottom five include Man Group, Severn Trent, Shroeder ands Alliance UniChem. But taking bottom spot is the Next chain with a ranking of 26.75 per cent.

The sites were judged on usability criteria relating to content, design, navigation and performance.