FT.com / Technology / Digital Business

FT.com / Technology / Digital Business

In it's latest Digital Business Special Report, Financial Times runs a very interesting index that ranks the best corporate web sites in the world, according to the methodology of Bowen Cragg. The index requires paid subscription to FT, but can be downloaded from here.

This special report made me remember the old days of the Internet era. And this idea came to my mind: what if you tried to implement today all the ideas and business plans (ok, only the reasonable ones) that exploded in those days? The assumptions that were used then were over-optimistic and were assuming that they would be achieved much earlier than expected: penetration of bandwidth, number of users, investment in online publicity,...However, most of them are real today.

The other idea that came to my mind is this obsession I have with attention management: everything the methodology tries to measure is how the website maximizes your ROA (Return On Attention) by ensuring that with the minimum effort and number of clicks you get what you need.

And finally, I was interested in seeing how much Web 2.0 techniques and principles have been adopted in corporate sites. According to this index, not much. I believe this is one of the things that will change significantly in future versions of this index. As companies discover how to use the power of the communities that can be created around their websites (customers, shareholders, employee candidates,...) the adoption of web 2.0 methods will grow.