PROJECTSTHAT GROW
YOUR ONLINEPRESENCE
NOW
DIRECTIONS SUPPLEMENT
JULY/AUGUST 10
In corporate communications it’s sometimes hard to decipher which channels and technologies are relevant. Making sense of the speed with which digital moves combined with effectively communicating what your strategy is, financial performance, annual report/review, sustainability programme or employee engagement programme can be challenging.
Where do we start? What is the impact on your online communications strategy and how can you create improvements without breaking the bank? How do we stop technology becoming a barrier to making change happen? Which areas should you be investing in?
It’s easy to just throw your hands up and, go it’s all just too hard, let’s just start again.
This supplement is about showing how you can break your strategy into bite-sized and manageable projects. These projects you can do right now without having to start from scratch. This proven approach will see results quickly and grow your presence more effectively.
Management requirements, imposed deadlines and budget constraints sometimes mean you need to improve your digital communications quickly and efficiently, without looking at every area that needs improvement.
The beauty and strength of digital media is that it doesn’t have to be perfect when you launch. As long as you are committed to evolving it over time, responding to user needs, developing new content and features and always building on a strong foundation. This ensures you see results faster, which contributes to fulfilling your strategy.
This Directions Supplement looks at simple and effective projects to improve and enhance your existing online communications, now.
What we are proposing is neither rocket science nor a radical new approach to online communications. However, sometimes working in the online industry it is easy to forget the basics. We all get excited about the latest and greatest technology. Who doesn’t?
At salterbaxter, we believe that investing in a major project that takes 18 months to launch is not always the right way to approach your digital communications. Breaking it into bite-sized chunks, simplifying the process into smaller projects will not only lead to results faster, but it can also add real benefits to your users right now.
Why growing your online presence incrementally is smarter
Mel McVeighHead of [email protected]
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Directions SupplementJuly 10
results, they want to read the latest strategic direction. They may want to know your position on sustainability?
Kingfisher have created a great home page. The user is instantly given a strong sense of the organisation. There is a clear positioning statement and content targeted to key users interested in product, innovations, reports, and quick links and key features. They have maximized the page design and answered the key questions of their audience.
A great home page provides multiple entry points into content without providing too much information. It must explain your business quickly and provide links to relevant content and links based on user tasks and needs.
If it doesn’t, it isn’t working hard enough.
The Antofagasta home page is an example of a one-click wonder. Although all the content is within the navigation, there is no option to highlight key information relevant to the users. The only link is news and is that enough to draw your users into the site?
On the flip side, beware of providing too much information. Using the Cobham home as an example, overwhelming a user with too much content or links with no hierarchy will only confuse a user. They won’t know where to click.
Put yourself in the user’s shoes and present information that matters to them. Think about why someone visits your website. They may be interested in the latest Annual
Directions SupplementJuly 10
Effective projects you can do now to improve your online communications.You have a digital strategy, your vision and objectives are clear. But you don’t know where to start or which projects are the most important. Creating a road map helps you to understand the end goal by breaking it down into smaller projects, implemented incrementally to ensure a targeted approach to your digital communications. At every stage you can then measure its success and adapt your requirements for the next project and focus on what your users need. What we illustrate is that change and improvement do not always involve a full redesign of your website and smaller projects and approaches can have a major impact to your online communications.
Key insights– Ensuring all relevant content is visible
is key– Think about what your users need
to see and structure accordingly– Provide links to multiple sources
of content – Bring engaging content to the surface
like videos and photo galleries– Use headings/caption smartly
to focus on user goals and needs
Option 1. Design a better home page
www.cobham.comso much information, where is a user meant to click?
www.kingfisher.co.ukclear positioning statement, quick links, financials.
www.antofagasta.co.ukthe only action for a user is to click on news.
Key insight– Audit all the online communications
you have– Can they all be found easily from
your primary site?– Create hubs, a page or areas on the
page where all your communications can be profiled and found
Option 2. Do more than communicate. Also aggregate
Online communications can get fragmented pretty quickly. Being in many places is important. This may include Twitter, LinkedIn Groups, Forums, Facebook, blogs etc. That is on top of all the micro-sites that you create and your users have to find and navigate.
So make it easy for users to understand where you are on the web and aggregate all your channels into one place for easy access.
Option 3. Make search work for you
You created this great website but no one is using it.
Organisations often invest time and effort to build a channel or microsite but it is almost impossible to find once the news link has gone from the home page. Users won’t visit your site if they don’t know it exists. Therefore, you need a strategy to ensure findability and it needs to be consistent and visible.
As an example, let’s try and find the Barclays Annual Report Centre.
This site is actually quite good. But unless you know it exists it is impossible to find.
Via the corporate website, http://group.barclays.com/Home – there is no mention.
Visit the Investor Centre http://group.barclays.com/Investor-Relations – – there is no mention
Visit latest Annual Reports page http://group.barclays.com/Investor-Relations/Shareholder-information/Annual-Reports. – there is no mention
Visit 2009 Annual Report http://www.barclaysannualreports.com/ar2009/And there in the menu is a link to Barclays Annual Reporting Centre– There it is.
If you use the corporate website search: type Barclays Annual Report Centre – no results but you do get 2007 as the top listing (not 2009?).
Go to Google and type in Barclays Annual Report Centre. Yes, it can be found, but this assumes you know what you’re looking for, which is not intuitive.
Key insight– Understand the way people find your site– Understand key terms people search for– Ensure it works if you search in Google– Ensure it can be found using the website global search– Ensure the relevant links are on key landing pages,
so you can be found– Ensure appropriate signposting on the corporate
site in relevant areas/pages– Ensure it works from your corporate website in a
few clicks
www.barclaysannual reports.comIf you create a new channel, make sure it can be found.
www.thecoca-colacompany.comSocial conversations featured on the home page.
www.ihgplc.comSocial channels linked direct from the home page.
Key insight– Design a visual hierarchy and structure
that can be applied across templates– Connect related tasks and features so
they are easy to find– Ensure messaging is simple yet bold– Make it easy for a user to scan the page
but breaking it up into smaller elements
A client perspective: Reed Elsevier Corporate Website
Option 4. Reskin can improve your user experience
Sometimes we don’t have time to do a full redesign that includes improving the information architecture and underlying technology.
Looking at the visual design, the hierarchy of elements on the page, connecting tasks and information will greatly improve your online experience.
The appointment of a new CEO in early 2009 prompted us to review the development strategy for our corporate website, www.reedelsevier.com
Having partnered with Salterbaxter on a major project to migrate to a new SharePoint environment in 2007/8, we were keen not to have to go back to the drawing board for a wholesale rethink of the site this time around. So a strategy of incremental, focussed and effective enhancements, over time, to grow our online presence and constantly engage our audiences held a great deal of appeal.
Two benefits of this approach became immediately apparent. It tied in with our available budget, and meant that we could deliver tangible improvements to the site within the inevitably tight timescales that would be required. Taking one element of the site in isolation, we could focus on how to make it work harder for our audiences, and turn it around as part of a short, sharp, impactful mini-project.
But where to start? We undertook a review of the site including information architecture, template design, page styles, content appropriateness and homepage design, whilst ensuring that our core objective was always at the forefront of our thinking: to showcase the value of our products, through innovation and our customers.
We recognised that achieving this objective could come via a number of options: improvements to the site SEO, refreshing elements of the design, improving the overall IA, introducing social and rich media.
By breaking down these options into their component parts, we could take a step back from the whole and better prioritise what we needed to do first. We were able to pinpoint what needed fixing, allowing us to implement key changes to the site. Once the fixes were made, we could then focus our efforts on analysing feedback post implementation, and tweaking and improving as necessary.
There were challenges to working this way, mostly in adapting to the shorter development timescales and having to take quicker decisions to overcome unforeseen issues.
We opted to refresh the existing look and feel of the homepage and improve some of the tired old site templates. Within three months we had successfully produced a truly refreshed site that was almost unrecognisable from the old design, without breaking the bank.
We are now looking at the next improvement phase – integrating social media into the site – with a similar turnaround time, and with the expectation of similar success.
Before
After
Piers ThornewillCorporate Communications ManagerReed Elsevier
www.reedelsevier.com The new Reed Elsevier website takes the existing structure and re-skins the content in a more meaningful and engaging way for the user.
Contact:Nigel Salter [email protected]: +44 (0)20 7229 5720Melissa McVeigh [email protected]: +44 (0)20 7229 5720
About DirectionsDirections is a series of research and insight pieces covering the full range of corporate communications issues. These supplements support the main annual Directions report which focuses on corporate responsibility. If you’d like to contribute please get in touch. [email protected]
About usWe are creative communications and strategy advisers to Europe’s largest and most exciting organisations. We’re passionate about interactive design and build user-friendly websites that drive engagement and value to your organisation.
Whether you are looking to get more value from your existing technology, need to promote a new product or service, or want to engage your customers in a dialogue for change, we can help you navigate the digital world.
We design and deliver websites, multi-channel platforms and applications and social media channels that engage audiences and provide effective, interactive and enriching experiences.
Our expertise covers strategic consultancy, social media strategy, user experience and research, analytics, SEO, design and build.
Specifically we deliver corporate websites, social media experiences and applications, intranets, online annual reports, corporate responsibility sites and reports.
We apply a user-centric mindset to all digital projects. Our creative and technical approach starts with putting your target audience and their needs at the heart of the project and making sure these complement and maximise your business and communications requirements.
This supplement is printed on Think Bright and is supplied by Howard Smith. It is an FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified material and is 100% recyclable.www.hspg.com
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202 Kensington Church Street London W8 4DPTel +44 (0)20 7229 5720 Fax +44 (0)20 7229 5721 www.salterbaxter.com
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HammersonHSBCING Group International PowerLEGO GroupMarine HarvestMillicom/TigoMorrisonsNokiaNorthern FoodsOrklaProvident FinancialReed ElsevierRolls-RoyceTelefónica O2 EuropeTullow Oil
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