What makes a top class corporate web presence?

First, you can move around easily without losing your bearings. This is a sign both of good construction and good governance – that is, the web presence is run according to well-observed rules and processes.

Second, the best sites do all the jobs they could be doing. They offer a high quality service to all stakeholders: people looking for jobs, customers, journalists, investors and the important social responsibility lobby (see Leaders by metric for more). They even take care to offer good contact points – an element we include separately because it is often the most important role a site plays.

Third, they make good use of web technology. With the spread of broadband, video, podcasts and the like make increasing sense, though imaginative use of less bandwidth hungry tools can be at least as valuable. We see little evidence yet of ‘Web 3.0’ devices to build communities online. This may be because these corporate giants are laggardly or because they are rationally cautious. Whichever, we can expect to see more experimentation over the next year.