To assess how effectively a Website encourages prospects to engage with the company’s salespeople and/or find a reseller, the siteIQ evaluation team identifies and measures 14 types of call to action features.

Usability reviews focus on whether the purchase process is logical and how easy it is to find purchasing information and sales links.

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Best-in-class partner zones are notable for clear and concise program information; short click streams; and multiple ways to engage with company contacts.

To assess how effectively a Website presents and markets channel, partner and alliance programs, the siteIQ evaluation team identifies and measures 34 types of content, features & capabilities.

Usability reviews focus on how well the company presents various channel, partner and alliance programs, content quality & clarity; how easy it is to find the channel marketing zone; and how effectively the site encourages potential partners to take next steps.

This case study announces 2013′s leaders, laggers — and fast movers in the Channel/Partner Marketing category.

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To find out, we evaluated the 23 sites on the siteIQ eBusiness Index using our Website Best Practices Benchmark.

Once we finished, we tallied up the scores, ranked and rated each Website — and identified new trends, and requirements.

Here are the leaders, laggers — and fast movers in the Product Marketing category.

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Apple.com’s buyer communities are a great example.

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To find out, we evaluated the 23 sites on the siteIQ eBusiness Index using our Website Best Practices Benchmark.

Once we finished, we tallied up the scores, ranked and rated each Website — and identified new trends, and requirements.

Here are the leaders, laggers — and fast movers in the Navigation & Architecture category.

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Lessons Learned:

1. Sometimes art imitates life. Dell’s and HP’s business woes are mirrored at their Websites – which are bleeding competitive ground where it counts.
2. Of the two, Dell.com brings in more good and best practice ratings – but saw the largest ranking losses. (And here’s a real moment of irony for a company going private: Dell.com’s investor relations zone is a good practice site).
3. Dell.com and HP.com are still the “go to” sites to see world-class ecommerce in action and should be on everyone’s “best-in-class” product marketing list. Beyond that, pick your poison carefully.
4. And here’s the bummer. Your Website isn’t just a venue for you to market and sell your wares. Put under the right lens, it’s actually telling tales you probably don’t want the world to know.

One of the things I like best about our annual rankings is that they give me a nifty road map to follow when I want to see the best of the best in action.

Turns out, they can also tell you a lot about which sites are starting to lose their competitive edge.

This year, I have to put HP.com and Dell.com at the top of this list. Although both still rank solidly in the Top 10, they are bleeding competitive ground where it counts.

Dell.com

It’s no secret that Dell’s business has been struggling as tablets and mobile phones gobble up computing center stage. Turns out that Dell.com is struggling as well.

This year, Dell.com’s competitive rankings dropped in 10 (out of 18) categories – with whopping losses in Design & Innovation (dropped from #5 to #12), Navigation (slid from 6th to 15th), and Services Marketing (5th to 14th). Corporate Marketing (an important area for Dell these days) lost even more ground (dropped to 17th) – and ranks well below the competitive sites that count.

And where does Dell.com still have an advantage? eCommerce, where Dell.com still ranks #1 — and is the Best Practice performer across the board (Content & Features, Usability, and Overall Performance). And after years down the roster, its powerful search capabilities now also rank number one.

Product marketing is another place that Dell.com excels (ranks #2 and brings in a Good Practice) – and its persistent call to action behaviors continue to set best practice standards. Industry Marketing might be perceived as another bright spot (ranks 5th ) – but Dell.com is actually toward the top of a very bad lot.

HP.com

HP is another company that’s going through its own identity crisis – and the HP.com site has mirrored the company’s descent into chaos over the past few years. In 2012, I thought the tide might be turning when some valiant enterprise stakeholders broke ranks and launched a handful of nicely designed sites. Alas, it wasn’t enough.

Our 2013 rankings show that HP.com is engaged in a slow motion competitive meltdown that is accelerating over time. Competitive rankings dropped in 12 of 18 categories this year (yikes!) –and HP.com held its ground in only 3 areas: eCommerce (#2), Events (#14) and Search (#10). Only Partner and Services Marketing gained ground.

And where does HP.com excel? Like Dell.com, HP.com’s main claim to fame lies in its ecommerce capabilities, where it ranks #2 and brings in a well deserved Best Practice rating.

Product Marketing (#3) and Training & Education (#2) are also Good Practice bright spots that deserve a close look. It’s also worth mentioning that nice usability gains allowed HP.com’s new services marketing zone to jump two places and tie with CA.com for first place this year.

The Bottom Line

So what else can you glean from what we see at Dell.com and HP.com? A truth that should make you shudder.

Your Website isn’t just a venue for you to market and sell your wares. Put under the right lens, it’s actually telling tales you probably don’t want the world to see.

• How rogue designs and off-the-reservation behaviors pinpoint organizational squabbles and power grabs going on behind the scenes.
• Which marketing groups really understand their products, customers, and value propositions – and which ones are clueless about market needs.
• The difference between bold promises and your company’s real commitment to jointly sell with partners and channels.
• Your company’s real product pecking order — including the strategic stars, orphans, and cash cows.

Yep, you can tell a lot by spending some quality time on a Website. Which brings me to the question.

What’s your Website saying these days?

But there is a new muse that is attainable. Welcome EMC.com.

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This year is no exception.

Well it’s that time of year again when we announce the results from our evaluations of 23 Websites on the siteIQ eBusiness Index.This year we changed up the roster of Websites (including adding everybody’s darling, Apple.com), added social media metrics to the benchmark, and changed how we calculated usability rankings so that small but mighty sites have a fighting chance.

This year I had three burning questions:

1. Is the new generation of “less is more” designs just a new type of pretty face – or do they really improve a site’s effectiveness and usability?
2. What is the fate of sites that have ignored these new designs in favor of pushing peas around the plate? Is business as usual having an impact on their competitive rankings and usability scores?
3. How does Apple.com really compete when it is directly compared to other IT sites? Where are its sweet spots – and what can other Web teams learn?

The simple answers to these questions are – yes — yes – and really well.

Which brings me to the next question. How did these and other trends affect the Top 10 Usability rankings? Let’s just say the sites that were the busiest last year—plus the addition of usability darling Apple.com—really shook up the status quo. Here’s why.

New designs are paying off

If you look at this year’s Top 10, you’ll see that sites pursuing a variety of new “less is more” designs gained ground this year.

• EMC.com’s wholesale revamp and keen attention to social media practices kicked it up 2 spots to 8th place.
• Oracle.com’s current work in progress and stellar showing in the social media rankings bumped it up a notch to land in 7th place.
• IBM.com, who jumped on the new design bandwagon in late 2011 hit a triple. Software Group (#3) and Global Services (#11) gained ranking ground, and the IBM.com mother ship retained its slot at the top of the rankings.
• The real story this year is SAP.com, who executed nothing less than a ranking trifecta. It jumped from #14 to #9 on the overall Index and its content & features portfolio also ranks in the Top 10. More importantly, as you’ll see below, SAP.com’s usability ranking skyrocketed from #17 to #12. If it tackles a couple of challenges, it could easily end up in the Top 10 next year.

Apple.com is both more – and less – than you might think

Apple.com had an impressive debut on the Index this year. Overall, it ranks 11th —  slightly ahead of Microsoft.com. Usability is, not surprisingly, Apple’s forte.

Among the 23 sites in our study, Apple.com’s usability debuted at #4 and it is only one of four sites that achieves a good practice rating.

If you’ve spent any quality time on Apple.com its usability claims to fame won’t surprise you. They lie in three key areas:

1. Content that is easy to understand (ranks #1);
2. The site’s innovation and consistency (ranks #6); and
3. Powerful calls to action and purchasing behaviors (also ranks #6).

That’s not to say that Apple.com is perfect. Despite its reputation as a design and usability star, Apple.com does have some interesting shortcomings. For example, the site’s silo architecture is less than logical, information is not particularly easy to find (both rank #16) — and content is hardly complete or thorough (ranks #14).

If you made an apples to apples comparison (sorry, couldn’t resist) to competitive sites, these flaws would signal real trouble ahead. But Apple’s unique business and Website strategy make these deficits little more than a flesh wound.

Standing pat is a (really) bad decision

If there’s one thing this year’s rankings prove, it’s that this is a tough crowd to compete with.

Take HP.com, for example. In 2010, HP.com’s usability ranked 9th — and it had placed in the Top 10 for almost a decade. Today, this site’s disjointed slow motion roll out handed it 14th place – down from 11th last year. As important, its Software, Networking and Home/Home Office zones all debuted at the bottom of the list.

Which brings us to the sites that spent 2012 working around the edges or pushing the proverbial peas around the plate.

Within this group, Dell.com, Symantec.com, Adobe.com, Intel.com, and Accenture.com all saw their usability rankings drop dramatically – although Symantec.com and Accenture.com did squeak onto the Top 10 list. Dell.com didn’t fare as well; it dropped from #9 to #13.

Finally, we come to Cisco.com, who lost its top tier ranking due to an interesting set of dynamics; its remarkably thin social media footprint (an IBM and CA forte) — and the fact that Apple.com debuted in 4th place.

Lessons Learned

So what can we learn from this year’s usability rankings? Three things.

1. Sites that haven’t embraced the “less is more” design revolution need to get religion – and fast. Old designs can’t compete with the improved usability these new designs are delivering.
2. Apple.com is a perfect muse if you want to create a delightful user experience, but you follow its architecture and content strategies at your own risk.
3. Learn from HP.com. You can’t execute a revolution unless all of your stakeholders are singing from the same hymn book — and sitting in the same church.

Next Steps:

Reports related to this research:

 2012 Website Usability & Effectiveness Report

Last week we took it for a test drive – and learned five important things.

The new EMC.com fared nicely in our latest eBusiness Index usability rankings, jumping from 10th to 8th in a single year.

We’re not surprised. EMC.com is a perfect example of new “less is more” designs sweeping over the Web. It also shows what can happen when you revamp a site from stem to stern, instead of doing it in pieces.

We took EMC.com for an in-depth test drive to see what good practices and innovations it brings to the party. At the top of the list are five things:

1. Icons can be more than eye candy. In addition to their usual duties, EMC.com’s contextual icons are solving difficult navigation problems.
2. Pristine designs love snacking architectures. EMC.com is educating its visitors by providing marketing content in small bites throughout the click stream, instead of a single monster page at the end.
3. EMC.com is a poster child for product marketing – Twitter style. The site’s single-sentence navigation descriptions aren’t much shorter than the product marketing overviews.
4. K.I.S.S. can create great mega-menus. EMC.com’s mega-menu isn’t full of bells and whistles like the perennial mega-menu favorite, Cisco.com. Its new stylish mega-menu proves that less can be more.
5. A microsite truce is actually possible (hooray!).EMC.com has come up a new way to achieve peace with microsite owners – hidden navigation.

We’ve profiled the new EMC.com in a new case study in the Library – complete with screenshots of some of its most interesting innovations.

Not a Library subscriber? You can learn more here.

Recent Posts & Related Case Studies

• Blog: 5 things you probably didn’t know about Apple.com
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