In those short, personal moments at the end of our Zoom calls and Teams’ meetings, many of us express wonder at how the pandemic has changed so many business fundamentals so quickly. And while I passionately believe that we no longer go online, but live online, I also find that something else has shifted significantly for corporations in the wake of 2020: The smartest ones are changing how they present themselves to the world.
In a new era where stakeholder capitalism and corporate citizenship matter tremendously, business itself is transforming to reflect its increased responsibilities. As a result, corporations now have larger opportunities to respond to new behaviors with more effective digital experiences. In a complex world, the digital ecosystem should make it easier to do business with any company. And I believe that the corporate website is at the heart of how companies now express the ways in which they are making difference.
A corporate website or “dot com” is no longer just a brochure to communicate a company's products and services. It is the spine of a brand's digital ecosystem and a vital platform to engage all stakeholders, shape perceptions, drive behavior, and generate revenue. It is the first place where customers, investors, and job seekers go to experience a brand and learn about an organization. And it is of increasing importance in our expanded digital lives in 2021.
Vertic has developed a Global Corporate Website Index to both rank and evaluate the world's top-performing corporate websites. It establishes industry benchmarks, gathers valuable intel, and gives marketers a way to appraise their website's performance. The Index sheds light on best practices, identifies areas of improvement per sector, and forecasts megatrends trends for 2021 to help companies get a better ROI on their website.
Three hundred sites across 21 sectors have been evaluated for Design & User Experience, Relevancy, and Use-of-Technology. The number one website on the Index scored the highest average across these categories. The Index also provides an analysis of industry sectors and their position on the digital adoption curve. This snapshot features a breakdown of a sector's score and insights into current challenges and areas for improvement.
The best corporate websites can satisfy a marketer’s need for relevant data, play a vital role in positioning brand values and ethics for all possible stakeholders, attract talent, inform the investment community, furnish essential information to policymakers, and provide meaningful experiences in a digital-first world that goes far beyond a what is possible on standardized templates. In sum, companies’ competitiveness will increasingly be determined by how digitally sophisticated and intelligent their dot coms are.
Various reports over the past 24 months concluded that buyers believe that the corporate website is the most important and influential touchpoint in their decision making. The significant acceleration in everything digital over the past 12 months suggests that the corporate website must serve as the one-stop shop for everything connected to your company.
Explore the Global Corporate Website: https://vertic.com/ranking/
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