Here`s our brand, but you can`t come in

Many things can be said about Web sites in general, before there`s even a need to start being complimentary. So, in this second column on things that have floored journalists, I`ll restrict myself, first of all, to what journalists think is wrong with Web sites.

But, no, that`s also too wide - I`d still be here tomorrow morning. Far better to turn attention to corporate Web sites which, everyone will agree, ought to be inviting - to consumers, who buy their stuff, and the media, who write articles that help consumers decide.

Far more widespread is that many multinationals with a physical SA presence don`t follow it up in cyberspace.

Carel Alberts, Journalist, ITWeb

The Internet pages belonging to large companies rate among the Web`s "very well frequented", and the main reason for their popularity is that they use their Web interface as a go-to-market outlet.

Yet most corporate Web sites seem to say: "Here`s our brand, now like it. You can`t come in, it`s hard to find information here, often you can`t phone us, and we burned our fingers on e-commerce, so shop`s closed. Try the Yellow Pages, for crying out loud. Just don`t think dealing with us will be easy."

The media should rate among a company`s most important audiences if it is interested in leveraging publishing platforms to get its messages across. And if the media is in any way interested in your company, I think they have the right to expect certain things. These include easy navigability; white papers; lists of spokespersons and contact details; instantly viewable thumbnails; links to multi-meg, high-resolution downloads; and quick page downloads - in short, all the stuff that comes to mind when you really think about the audience.

To protect, omit or hide this information amid a haystack of other information betrays an inward-looking attitude and does not invite open discussion or commentary. If we cannot find the information, there`s no telling what we`ll write in our ignorance. A good example to all other sites with regard to ready information is www.intel.com.

Of course, there are also aspects to a Web site which no one needs. Here`s a quick checklist of what gets a visitor`s goat: Obsessive over-branding. Flash. Graphics galore. So much information that you don`t know where to look. Instead of phone numbers and contact persons, just a customer services hotline. Whirligig spirals following the pointer. Flashy button thingies that cause headaches. Pop-ups, especially clever pop-ups with double frames and a fake closing X, top right, taking you to The World`s Biggest Casino or Asian Teens. And ads in the middle of stories.

Now that`s out of my system, let`s cruise the Web a bit and see what we can find. It`s all for the greater good.

The sites I stumbled across by no means represent an exhaustive list (space constraints), and simply happen to be the most top-of-mind of the ones I visited over recent weeks.

Cell C is, generally speaking, in your face and a pretty delightful presence on the corporate landscape. But it`s also off your screen. I changed my 800x600 back to 1024x768, to see what the heck I`m missing, without even the option of scrolling across or down, and what do you know? Go see for yourself. Just don`t expect it all to work.

Far more widespread than that problem is that many multinationals with a physical SA presence don`t follow it up in cyberspace. It`s all the rage, this toning down business, and while it`s probably a good thing in terms of consistent branding and messaging, it just drives one crazy not to be able to find an SA site at all.

It used to be that you could affix a .co.za suffix to any company name and you`d find a local site. As things stand, with just this small sample of local branches of multinationals, www.symantec.co.za still obligingly takes you to the EMEA region, whereas www.3com.co.za invokes http://search.msn.co.za, a very disturbing sight.

Symantec, to name but one example, seems to refuse point blank to take you anywhere, once you`ve reached Europe. In the drop-down countries list, SA is nowhere to be found.

Usually, by now the journalist is in a quandary. He doesn`t know whether the incumbent head of Symantec SA is the country manager, the GM or the MD, how to spell his first name or what number to phone.

Wondering whether Symantec SA even features on the vendor`s landscape (it appears not to, on the Web), the journalist starts weighing up two opposing realities, that the SA branch probably earns less than 1% of global revenue, and the habit of visiting honchos proclaiming the country "strategically very important to us, especially with our drive into Africa".

Confused, the journalist looks around for Contact Us which, he knows, usually provides links to regional sites and contact details. He saw this once on www.didata.com, but tends to forget that example, incongruous as the .com suffix is in an originally South African company.

But there is no Contact Us on Symantec, so as a last ditch, he goes to About Us, which, with a bit of investigative second-guessing, supplies a corporate directory. Phew! No matter that he missed deadline, tomorrow is another day, and at least he can contact the market leaders then about the latest worm, news of which, he now sees, has been picked up by his competitor.

With the beginnings of a stomach-ache, he goes to make coffee, and smokes four cigarettes without noticing. It turns out Symantec SA equals Symantec Middle East and Africa, but by now the journalist has given up figuring all this out, and has another cigarette.

Dimension Data is no better. Trying to find a contact number leads one off into either falling prey to parting with one`s details (filling in interminable fields, just to get a phone number?), but if you really look, there is a small link with Global PR Contacts. PR Contacts - just the thing to get things moving, we always say. Of course, the PR listed as the SA contact no longer works there, but if you look really closely, the name next to her in this list of global contacts betrays her SA whereabouts, not because it says "South Africa", but because the e-mail-address says @za.didata.com.

Cisco`s version of the same thing is to supply a Select a Location/Language link, which really does take one to an SA phone number right away. While that was easy, it is by no means the rule.