FAQ

This page shows the common questions that we get asked and the answers that we give. If your question isn't answered here or you need to contact us directly, please use the Contact Us page.

• How many criteria do you have and how were they derived?  

  • The criteria were created by our editorial / blogger team (see biographies at Who are we?) based on their experience of looking at the best corporate websites. There are about 600 criteria in all with 3,000 best practice examples. This task took about a year of research to complete. Companies are constantly refining their sites and coming up with new ideas, so we add these new criteria and score them in batches as we identify new best practices.
    
     

• What categories do you assess?  

  • The criteria are assessed in a 3 tier hierarchy.
    
    First we split between Stakeholder Areas (the common sections of the corporate website) and Site Wide Areas (either persistent functionality or features that are available across the site).
    
    The second level of Stakeholder Areas are the six standard Stakeholder sections (About, Investor, Media, CSR, Corporate Governance and Careers).

    For Site Wide these are:

    • Cross Site Functionality (e.g. such as an alert service or breadcrumb trail)

    • Design and Brand Compliance

    • Content Quality

    • Site Freshness

    • Technical

    At the third level of the hierarchy some Categories split into sub-categories. For instance Content Quality splits into:

    • Words

    • Layout

    • Visuals

    The Technical category only has one sub-category for phase 1 (which is availability) but this will be expanded to a number of sub-categories in Phase 2.

• How do you calculate the scores?  

  • Each criterion is assigned a competency band. When scores are calculated a standard competency weighting is applied to each criterion met (so that Excellent criteria are valued more than Good which are valued more than Competent). These are then added up for calculating the Sub-Category Score.

    Each Sub-Category Score is calculated on a % basis - the actual scores multiplied by the relevant competency weighting divided by the maximum possible score. Standard Sub-Category and Category weightings are then applied to each level to ensure that each area is given the appropriate influence in the make up of the overall score.

    These weightings have been reviewed by our Beta Test Client group

• How do you make sure the scores are consistent?  

  • Each website is dual scored i.e. two separate people score the site. Then a member of our Quality Assurance team reviews the scores and arbitrates on the final scores.

    We also periodically conduct ad-hoc reviews to check consistency.

• Do you score other sections such as Customer?  

  • Not at present however we are evaluating this area for additional assessment.

• How do you decide which Careers sections to score?  

  • We will score Careers sections that meet the following conditions:

    • If there is only one Careers site that is clearly identified from the corporate website - (it doesn't have to be hosted under the same domain);

    • If there are multiple careers sites in a number of locations (e.g. regions / countries) we will score the English site closest to the Headquarters of the company.

• If I want to evaluate multiple Careers sites against one another can I do that?  

  • Yes. Enter the relevant site details for each Careers site in the Missing Company pages (accessible from the Set Up Peer Group page in the Subscriber Area).

• My company isn't listed - can I still use the system?  

  • If you have a Corporate Site, you can still be compared to other sites, although obviously you may not have an Investor section to compare against others within the Peer Group.

• What types of criteria do you have?  

  • There are 4 types of criteria:

    • yes/no criteria - does the website being assessed have a specific feature or not

    • range criteria - where a given feature has to be subjectively assessed such as the quality / effectiveness of the design of the website where we use a 1-9 scale

    • threshold criteria - we use this for areas such as website availability where the site achieves a set score if the site has an availability over a rolling 3 month period of x% and a higher score if above y%

    • average based criteria - this is where we compare a feature of a website against the average performance of the rest of its Index or specified population - so for instance we assess the freshness of a site for content and functionality changes. We would calculate your site's score based on the average of the rest of the companies that we had scored.

• What Products do you offer?  

  • Products are described under the Products & Services pages - see Product and Services.

• What discounts do you offer for multiple seats?  

  • We offer increasing percentage discounts for each additional seat. The percentage depends on the Product purchased. Further details are provided on the Product pages - see pages under Product and Services.

• What Reports do I get with my Benchmarking product?  

  • The Reports included depend on the type of product purchased - these are specified within the Product pages - see pages under Product and Services

    6 Stakeholder Reports (on each of About, Investor, Media, CSR, Corporate Governance and Careers) are produced per year - one every 2 months.

    10 Industry Sector Reports are produced per year - one per month March through to December.

    Quarterly Index Reports are produced once we have fully scored a specific Index.

    All of the Reports above are also sold separately - see pages under Products and Services / Reports

• How do I pay?  

  • We accept payment by cheque or direct bank transfer in Pounds Sterling, Euro or US Dollars.

• What language sites do you score?  

  • At present we score English sites only.

• What languages do you provide Reports and the Benchmarking database in?  

  • At present we provide our Reports and our Subscriber areas in English only although we will be providing multi-lingual access in the near future.