Analytics for non-transactional sites

I’ve recently had to think about how to set measures and metrics for a corporate web estate that’s about the size of a small country.

Actually it’s not that big. I’ve worked on much larger corporate sites.

Up to now, the metrics the online team have been using are mainly  to do with reach, with a little bit of conversion or task-success thrown in for colour (but not much).

Edelman digital trends series

Edelman’s Steve Rubel is publishing a series of  ‘insights‘ into digital trends.

I’ve read the first one (17 Feb, pdf 2mb) and it’s a pretty good overview.

What happened to the Bear Stearns website?

Out of curiosity I checked out Bear Stearns’ website to see what had happened to it after ‘merging’ with JP Morgan Chase.

As far as I can work out JP Morgan Chase has dumped most of Bear’s content (good move, no doubt) and shoved its website into the old Bear Stearns template.

Above: Bear Stearns today (http://www.bearstearns.com/)

Below: JP Morgan Chase today (http://www.jpmorgan.com/pages/jpmorgan):

Scary stories from the front

Social Network Analysis story from Danish newspaper E24 (Nov 20, 2007)

So, I discovered recently (belatedly) that journalism students do courses in … computer assisted reporting. Well, that’s not so surprising is it? What is surprising is that with a little bit of brains, some experience and a tiny amount of ducking and diving, journalists can generate some quite juicy stories from company websites and other ‘computer generated’ stuff.

For example?

Well, how about the time that a very famous news agency got a story before it was due to be released by the company simply by changing a digit in the company URL to reveal documents that were on the server awaiting publication but not yet published (in the ‘dark’ as it were). The company was miffed, and despite the fact that URL hacking is a no-no, the news agency broke the story first.

Is there a future for corporate websites?

No.

Well, not as we currently know them.

Site sections devoted to company information such as About Us, Our Business/What we do, Our company, Corporate social responsibility, and so on have no future. The information they do contain that has any use will be pared down (and probably end up as a pdf).

What will remain is recruitment, media and investor information sitting behind product information, such as in the newly relaunched Panasonic dotcom/UK website or at IBM dotcom/UK.

The general model now is that the companyname.com URL (or doteu, dot -fr-uk-de, etc) is the corporate/brand website offering investor, media, regulatory, CSR, governance information, etc.

The dotcom is not a gateway to company products and marketing information.

That model is losing companies money by frustrating consumers and failing to direct them to marketing and product websites.

Can’t get the staff?

Have you ever noticed that sometimes…no, often…companies put out adverts or job specs for a web editorial role that is, more or less, a request for a whole department in one package, rather than just one individual with a specialism?

Here are two corkers.

This job ad (enlarge image) is for a “Web Designer/Editor”. It says:

Web 2.0, social networking, and the rest … not the point

In his Prospect review of Against the Matchine by Lee Siegel, We-Think by Charles Leadbeater, and Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky, Andrew Keen says:

“If this debate between Shirky, Leadbeater and Siegel about the relationship between community and technology sounds familiar that’s because it is. It’s at least version 5.0 of a conversation about industrial society begun by Rousseau and Marx and then, as the Web 2.0 crowd likes to put it, “remixed” by everyone…”*

He ends the article by drawing the focus out a little wider:

Press releases, templates, activity over passivity

Todd Defren, Shift Communications, has posted the company’s updated social media press release.

Helping companies structure their online content is always a good thing. It’s quite generous of Shift to offer the template for free.

One of the template’s strengths is it’s using the medium’s innovative structuring potential and moving beyond the metaphor of the *page* (avoiding using the web as a kind of backlit book).

Rankings from the Financial Times/Bowen and Craggs

The FT’s annual website effectiveness index was published on April 2.

Creative under constraints

I had THAT conversation again today. The one during which a company’s web editor (ahem, now known as online channels manager) whose budget is next to nil says how much you can do, how very creative you can be, with only a little (e.g. next-to-nil).

I’ve heard THAT many times in different guises from many sources, not just web managers.