What is the value of a website?
Jinfo Blog

31st May 2009

By Udo Hohlfeld

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The FT/Bowen-Craggs-Index provides a yearly assessment of the home pages of international companies. This is the third time that the web presence of the 75 largest companies by market capitalization have been closely analyzed. The relevant categories were 'construction', 'message', 'contact' and how the information needs of various stakeholders were served. And the winner is: the user, the websurfer, as the assessment clearly showed that a website does not have to be boring (a static webpage with an archive section included). The 2009 index (pdf-file) can be accessed at http://digbig.com/4ytpw The value of this index is that the focus group is large enough to allow the identification of trends in website programming and also to learn how companies adopt new ideas for their messaging and communication with users. One weakness of the index is that, by its focus on the largest companies worldwide, it actually includes companies that have a keen interest in delivering a sound web experience. Yet this year the index shows a clear gap in this group, as companies mostly from industrialized countries are already embracing social media while those from the emerging countries are still at the beginning of social media adoption. According to the authors of the index: 'At one end are companies that are pushing the boundaries of the web, exploiting broadband and experimenting with social media. At the other end, companies are struggling to maintain a mediocre web presence. The gap has never been wider.' For more information: http://www.bowencraggs.com/ftindex

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