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Archives for March 2009

Corporate websites and the case for accessibility

I recently asked Helen Baker to give us some advice about accessibility and the corporate website.

Helen provides a range of freelance web content services, with a focus on accessible, usable copy in plain English. She started out in technology PR for a global firm before moving on to the corporate communications team of FTSE 250 engineering company Balfour Beatty, and was responsible for http://www.balfourbeatty.com, when she was first introduced to the issues surrounding corporate websites. Find out more about her on www.concisecontent.co.uk.

Over to you, Helen:

Corporate websites and the case for accessibility

accessibility

As more and more companies provide and actively encourage their stakeholders to access corporate information online, accessibility is becoming an even greater issue.

Accessible websites benefit everyone, both visitors and business. But research shows that many corporate websites are still failing to reach even minimum accessibility standards.

Accessibility is a legal requirement for many businesses

Service providers in the UK have been legally required to provide accessible websites and applications since 1999. According to the Disability Discrimination Act, businesses have a duty to make reasonable adjustments to enable a disabled person to make use of its services, including those provided online.

A website’s design should make sure all users can have full and equal access to both services and information. If not, they run the risk of being accused of discrimination against people with disabilities, followed by being sued and receiving a lot of negative publicity.

All visitors benefit from more accessible websites

However, an accessible website isn’t just for people with disabilities. All visitors benefit from more accessible websites, from faster loading times through to easier-to-read text.

Accessible websites also benefit visitors with changing abilities, such as age-related issues, or people accessing information using both older (dial-up internet) and newer (mobile handsets) technologies.

Corporate websites serve audiences with diverse needs

Corporate websites provide information ranging from shareholder resources through to job vacancies. Consider two typical, very different audiences that would benefit from a more accessible website:

  • Retired employees: many older visitors suffer from age-related issues, such as poor vision and mobility difficulties (where using a mouse may be a problem). They also often use older equipment or browsers to access information.
  • Institutional shareholders: analysts often need to access financial information quickly via, for example, mobile handsets and platforms. They might also be using a slower internet connection reliant on a good mobile signal.

Accessibility provides tangible business benefits

Organisations with corporate websites that meet minimum accessibility requirements experience a number of business benefits. For example, the website will have an greater audience reach, it will be ‘future proofed’ as technologies change and its content will be optimised for search engines.

A popular case study is Legal & General, which launched a new website in 2006. It saw a massive increase in conversion rates (people asking for quotes), its search engine rankings significantly improved and it experienced a 100 per cent return on investment (ROI) within just 6 months, among many other benefits.

Corporate websites need to do better

In March 2006, Nomensa conducted research that showed ‘almost 75 per cent of businesses in the FTSE 100 list of companies fail to meet the minimum requirements for website accessibility’, as set by the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

Why are so many corporate websites failing on this front? There are a number of reasons, many of which may be practical but certainly aren’t an excuse. These range from under-resourcing through to a lack of in-house knowledge.

Some simple fixes for the short term

Convinced but not sure where to start in the short term? Try some of the following simple (but not necessarily quick) fixes. This is by no means a definitive list.

  • Make sure your text is presented in short paragraphs, using plain English, lists and descriptive headings
  • When you add the headings, make sure you use header tags and put them in the correct hierarchy
  • Add and use appropriate alt text for all images, where applicable
  • Check for good colour contrast between the text and the background
  • Check that links are descriptive and easily distinguishable from other text (e.g. underlined and in a different colour)
  • Ensure that body text is a reasonable default font size and can be increased by the reader
  • Provide text transcripts for any video or podcasts.

The following websites also provide some good starting points and quick reference documents:

Where to go for more information

Thanks, Helen!

Online Behavioral Ads Guidelines Released, Google Waits Days to Launch New Behavioral Ads Program

google-gingerbread-man-cookieIt had to come, and it’s here.  All that work Google has been doing to track people’s online behaviors has come to fruition. 

First, the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) released its online behavioral advertising guidelines earlier this month, and Google was one of the companies to agree to abide by them.  There are three primary rules that companies who agree to abide by the IAB guidelines must follow:

  1. Notice must be given to consumers that they are being tracked.
  2. Consent is assumed unless a consumer takes action and opts-out of receiving behavioral ads.  That means companies only need to provide an opt-out mechanism and seek consumer consent “where applicable” (whatever that means).
  3. Educating consumers about how their personal and private information is collected and how it can be used as well as how they can opt-out of behavioral advertising is required. [Read more…] about Online Behavioral Ads Guidelines Released, Google Waits Days to Launch New Behavioral Ads Program

When it Absolutely, Positively Has to be…Twittered

The Twitter phenomenon is contagious and has caught on to the corporation at Federal Express. I recently found their link on Twitter and began following them so that I could keep abreast with their updates and developments. What I wanted to see was the type of information that FedEx would provide on Twitter and how they would interact with their followers.

Many companies similar to FedEx establish a Twitter account, but very often don’t know what to do with it. Should they follow everyone who follows them? Should they simply provide links to their online material only? What about any negative news that many develop…should they Twit it?

Twitter is really turning out to be an impactful social networking site for businesses and entrepreneurs. But what can often be misleading and elusive for many companies is the “why” when they do decide to create a Twitter presence.

Do they want to share information with their followers or just be there when something (possibly) develops?

Are they at all interested in following others to see what they have to say or are they just being polite?

Is the service or product they provide amenable to the benefits of the Twitter program? In other words, does the business’ personality fit Twitter?

Twitter is for sharing and dispensing information, period. But, it is also designed for readers to receive information, learning and educating themselves on their peers and competitors in business. When you start following someone on Twitter, you get a feed that dispenses their updates, links and 140-character “what are you doing” bites. It is a very cool tool to help you network extensively and share your business. But, I am finding that there is a slight tip on the scale with businesses that are followed and those that are following in terms of the information that is dispensed on Twitter and the value in it.

For instance, this press release provided by FedEx talks about their generous contribution of $1 million to the Teach for America organization and fundraiser talks extensively about their goal of contributing to this cause and making education a top priority. The release article is very detailed and thorough and the cause will affect many people and shed a positive light on FedEx’s image, no doubt. But what could have perhaps brought even more attention to their cause and goal from an online perspective was to perhaps interview the people that this action would have or could affect. There is lots of potential there for them to showcase the benefactors.

Teach For America is the national corps of top college graduates who commit two years to teach in urban and rural public schools and become lifelong leaders in expanding educational opportunity for all children.

Where are those prior top college graduates and how has this program benefitted them? Would it be valuable at all to hear anything from them? Perhaps so, perhaps not. But large corporations like FedEx can do extremely well by focusing on the nuances of their good deeds and maximizing them towards their advantage. Sure, Twitter can help them with this action, but it has to be utilized in order to be effective.

I would suggest that FedEx beef up their Twitter links a little more to give it more of a social feel. Perhaps hire a social manager who would work to brand the FedEx label in online circles and connect with the people who help shape their business. Because when it absolutely, positively has to be done, Twitter is the way to do it.

It’s not the R—it’s the I

On his list of “13 Trends in Corporate Recruiting for 2009” (discussed in the Fast Forward post recently), John Sullivan includes as one of the forward directions: Reinforcing the business case for recruiting.

He points out that “as budgets tighten and slow economic growth continues, recruiting budgets will face constant constraints.” How to cope? Sullivan concludes that successful organizations will “reposition themselves as non-transactional,” focusing on “systemic issues” and working with the CFO and risk management “to demonstrate the importance of supporting recruiting even during times of reduced hiring volume.”

“Key focus areas,” he suggests, will include “predictive modeling, dollarizing recruiting results, and showing the dollar impact of vacancies in revenue generating positions.”

Since Sullivan’s analysis was written (in October 2008), the news about employment has been generally overwhelmed by news of unemployment. Record numbers of lay-offs, business closings, and other factors are relentlessly reducing the number of jobs available to Americans. So while Sullivan may be absolutely right in saying that good recruiting is not less valuable when you are hiring fewer people—what if there is no hiring at all? And what if there is no money at all? Companies losing billions and firing thousands seem unlikely to spend as much money on recruiting . . .

In that scenario, even if one could “dollarize recruiting results” to show a fabulous Return on a tiny Investment, there might not be much interest in spending any dollars. And that brings us to three questions:

  1. Assuming there is a recruiting budget at all, how much of it should go to web presence, and how much to other types of outreach (advertising, outsourced staffing, job fairs, campus recruiting, etc.)?

  2. If there is a specific budget or budget area earmarked for online recruiting—how much of that should go into the website itself, and how much to other types of online presence (implementation of social media strategies, development of virtual tools and events, podcasting, vlogs, etc.)?

  3. And if there isn’t a recruiting budget at all . . . what does that mean for web presence?

One obvious hurdle in answering questions 1 and 2 is the need for metrics to support the value of web presence. While some companies (probably not most) have traffic analysis around the website itself—and may even have taken that analysis further by, for example, integrating web statistics with cost of hire—few companies will at this point have metrics that reflect the cost-to-value ratio of social media activities.

With economic concerns at the forefront of just about every business consideration these days, it’s worth taking a look at each of these questions in turn. So stay tuned for an ROI series during the month of March. And in the meantime, consider Sullivan’s detailed 2008 discussion of recruiting in hard times.

Recession Bodes Well for Ambient Media

subway-adWhy is ambient advertising growing as the economy plunges?  Because everyone is looking for a way to make some extra money when the economy is weak.  It’s a great time for brands to find super deals on ambient media placement and for new locations to get in on the action to make some extra cash.

According to an article in Brandweek, the current recession is bringing a wider variety of ambient media placement opportunities to brands and advertisers than ever.  Check out some of the more unique ambient media opportunities mentioned in the article: [Read more…] about Recession Bodes Well for Ambient Media

A Vision of Tomorrow, Where Money Isn’t Everything

mallen-bakerA fascinating blog article from CSR maven Mallen Baker caught my eye last week.  I’ve been chewing away on it ever since.

In Time To Redefine Ethical Investment he strikes directly at the root of what’s widely seen as the flaw in today’s business operations: responsibility.

Not the responsibility of managers and executives: the responsibility of investors.  Not socially responsible investment, but responsible company ownership.

In among everything else we’ve lost the fact companies are owned by their shareholders.  It’s not just an issue of finance; it’s an issue of management and governance as well.  Investors are owners.

. [Read more…] about A Vision of Tomorrow, Where Money Isn’t Everything