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Archive for microsoft.com

Website Rankings: Hits, misses & a little bit more

By Marty Gruhn · Comments (2)
Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

There are plenty of hits and misses on this year’s roster. My favorites are . . .

In my last post, I shared some info about the top five Websites on the siteIQ eBusiness Index. Here’s my interesting surprises and “oops” list:

Symantec.com’s usability ranks second, and the site misses a “Good Practice” rating by a hair.

Juniper.net and Oracle.com complete the usability top five. Of the two, Juniper.net is most likely to move up a slot and knock CA.com off its perch.

Intel.com aced the online recruiting category and is the only four star (the best) in this category. (OK, so most recruiting zones are a big snooze – but we have to give Intel.com chops for its four star performance).

Services marketing continues to be Nortel.com’s claim to fame; HP.com and IBM.com are still second tier contenders.

Juniper.net hits the high note in the communities category – but Cisco.com and Intel.com also operate four star (the best) communities. (This is another way of saying that the new guys are zipping past community pioneers).

If call to action is your bag, look no further than Cisco.com. It is the only call to action “Best Practice” site on the eBusiness Index.

Newegg.com’s e-commerce capabilities puts it with the big boys: Dell.com & HP.com. Newegg ranks third with four stars (the best) and a “Good Practice” nod.

A couple of new entrants on the 2010 eBusiness Index roster did better than expected.

  • Brocade.com and EMC.com rank 7th and 8th on the usability chart – and finish in the middle of the pack when all of the scores are tallied up (EMC.com ranks 12th; Brocade ranks 14th).
  • Among the sites that debuted on the Index in 2010, Deloitte.com and SAS.com turned out to be boat anchors. Deloitte finished dead last – and SAS.com debuted in 17th place (out of 23 Websites).

Related research: The eBusiness Index Report.  If you are a siteIQ client or subscriber, click here.

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Comments (2)
Categories : Website Rankings
Tags : brocade, brocade.com, dell, dell.com, deloitte, deloitte.com, hp, hp.com, ibm, ibm.com, intel, intel.com, juniper.net, junper, microsoft, microsoft.com, newegg, newegg.com, nortel, nortel.com, oracle, oracle.com ca.com, sap, sap.com, symantec, symantec.com

What Juniper.net knows that everyone else is missing

By Marty Gruhn · Comments (6)
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Juniper.net is pursuing an interesting strategy which I suspect most companies have missed. Last year, it did two things.

It launched a completely new Website in February.

Then it executed a wholesale update in October.

That wouldn’t be important, except for one thing. The October refresh was executed across the entire Website. From top to bottom. From stem to stern.

This, as it turns out, introduces a new design strategy into the mix. Until now, most Website teams have taken an incremental improvement approach, limiting updates and innovations to certain areas of their sites. A new home page; revamped product marketing zones; or a new look and feel for the top three layers of a site. The net result is that users have to re-learn the site every time they move between zones.

In contrast, Juniper.net’s approach is iterative. It’s not interested in hitting solid singles. It goes for the home run.

There are a couple of things to remember here. Read More→

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Comments (6)
Categories : Design, Strategy, Usability
Tags : architecture, cisco.com, Design, ebusiness index, hp.com, ibm.com, juniper.net, microsoft.com, product marketing, Strategy, Usability, website design, website development, website rankings, website redesign

Mega and Fat Become the Fashions of the Day

By Marty Gruhn · Comments (2)
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Click on this graph to see a lightbox of all best practices in this post

Five Websites are setting the pace

It’s interesting how something starts to hit a tipping point on the IT Web. Mega-menus are one of these designs – and fat footers aren’t far behind them.

In the mega-menu race, there are two main strategies in play, and some good and best practices worth considering.

On the strategy side, we have two basic approaches in evidence these days: mega-menus targeted at straight navigation – and those that add product marketing, corporate marketing and call to action dimensions.  In every case, there are great examples of both approaches on the IT Web.  Here’s some places to start: Read More→

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Comments (2)
Categories : Design, Navigation, Usability, Web 2.0
Tags : brocade.com, dell.com, Design, emc.com, fat footer, hp.com, insight.com, juniper.net, mega-menu, microsoft.com, Navigation, newegg.com, novell.com, Usability, Web 2.0

You know what they say about spoiling the broth

By Kenna Dian · Comments (0)
Monday, February 18th, 2008

Microsoft.com isn’t the only business software site that suffers from this “too many cooks” phenomenon

Recently, we spent some quality time pondering why business software sites are falling short of the competitive and effectiveness mark. A deep dive into these sites suggests that that the real culprits are site zone operators who are ignoring site-wide rules of the road.  The net result is a parade of page designs, layouts, and content delivery approaches that make it almost impossible for visitors to research and purchase multiple products—and  poor usability & effectiveness scores.

Microsoft.com provides an excellent example of this challenge in action. Each of Microsoft.com’s major product zones use completely different templates, page layout conventions, and navigation & content structures. This approach works fine when visitors are interested in researching & purchasing one product type and don’t need to venture outside a particular zone to access information & tools. Visitors looking for multiple solutions that cross product specific zone boundaries, however, will find that locating information & comparing products can be a deadly difficult task.

As it turns out, Microsoft.com isn’t the only business software site that suffers from this “too many cooks” phenomenon. In general, sites in this industry tend to be built on this archetype more than any other industry segment. Unfortunately, the end result are Websites that, at first blush, deliver a global look & feel, only to end up coming unraveled once visitors move beyond the first two levels of the site. This behavior is a classic symptom of poor governance policies—or .com organizations that have simply succumbed to zone anarchy on their sites. Read More→

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Categories : Design, Strategy
Tags : business software, microsoft.com

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  • Just reviewed HP.com's new networking zone & social media behaviors: How Twitter can ruin a marketing campaign http://bit.ly/9kqMEh about 13 hours ago from web
  • I love sales forces. They create the rules and then complain about the results http://bit.ly/aJvvSG 07:24:22 PM August 31, 2010 from web

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