A company is either going to have a section of their website dedicated to investors or they’re not, and that decision largely depends on whether they are publicly traded. For American companies, laws exist that demand certain types of filings with the SEC be made public on a company’s website, so this section may be mandatory. For others, the simple desire to communicate avidly with stakeholders (or future stakeholders if the company is ramping up to go public) drives the need for this section. Because this material usually appears on sites for larger corporations, drawing best practices and common design solutions is difficult because the sample pool is smaller. For instance, even the naming of the section varies, although the word “investor” is the primary term used to flag down interested parties. Some variations found across the Web are as follows:   Read more

It is probably true that the majority of a corporation’s website visitors will have passable vision, no significant learning disabilities, and not suffer from epilepsy. It’s even common for businesses to think people with those inhibitions will never visit their site because “that’s not our target audience.” But remember that a target audience is not the only audience, and disabilities are more common than most believe (remember, about 32 million in the United States alone). Beyond designing for that significant slice of the population, there are many reasons to consider accessibility in a corporate web project.   Read more

While the design industry is slowly becoming more educated through the evangelism of Joe Clark1 and sites like Ian Lloyd’s Accessify,2 many web designers still incorrectly equate “disabled” with “blind.” While it is true that the Web plays host to a significant number of people with visual impairments, to slice the definition of disability so narrow is a disservice to the millions of users with other handicaps.   Read more

Here’s the reality: people search with words that make sense to them. For most people, that means plain, short, common words, not the oblique marketing speak so prevalent on the Web. Too many corporate sites (and the technology sector is by far the most consistent offender) feature marketing messages so pregnant with buzzwords, made-up phrases, and convoluted clauses that it’s questionable whether the original writer has any clue what he was trying to communicate. The company that speaks in everyday vernacular will simply appeal to a wider customer base. For instance, people will not type “integrated premises-based ECM solution” into a search engine. So if your site says that, you are missing a disproportionately large segment of your target audience. Someone might type in “content management for accounts payable.” Maybe. More likely, that person will search for “software to organize invoices,” and then find the company that solves this problem without talking about all of that ECM mumbo jumbo.   Read more

Traditionally, corporate websites have been offensive, built to sell. But offense is not enough. In sports, there are three facets to every successful team: offense, defense, and coaching. The most effective websites have a similar three-pronged approach: marketing to new customers (offense), supporting existing customers (defense), and providing general corporate information that supports the other two (coaching). Let’s examine these three key tiers more closely.   Read more