"About Us" Evaluation: : Freeport McMoRan Gets a C

Freeport McMoRan (FCX) is the world’s largest publicly traded producer of copper, the world’s largest producer of molybdenum, and a significant producer of gold. Its largest asset is the Grasberg mine in Indonesia. Headquartered in Phoenix, AZ, it has more than 29,700 employees. Its main About Us page is here.

OVERALL GRADE: C

Accessibility: B

Compared to Kemet’s Contact Us page, Freeport McMoRan’s is conventional and boring, but it does give the usual information in the usual order, and it’s easy to find.

Products/Services: B

Freeport McMoRan’s business is clear on the main About Us page and on all the sub-pages. The photos are excellent: they show not only that the company is in mining, but that it’s mining on a huge scale.

We’d suggest combining the Who We Are, Our Skills, and Strategies pages into one page, with subheads and plenty of photos. As a narrative, they’d make more sense and be more likely to be read.

Personality: D

The About Us pages give little sense of what drives the company. The Management page states that the company has a 12-member Board of Directors, and gives the names of the chairman of the board and the CEO. The History page was clearly cobbled together after Freeport McMoRan acquired Phelps Dodge in 2007. It starts with a timeline of Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold from 1988 to 2007. Although the introductory paragraph states that the “Freeport” part of the company dates to the early 1900s, no history is given for Freeport, nor is any explanation given of why the other half of the company name is “McMoRan.”

At the end of the History page is a brief narrative account of Phelps Dodge, founded in 1834. This was clearly an afterthought, probably pasted in from the old Phelps Dodge site. Yes, there should be some information on Phelps Dodge, but the emphasis here is all wrong: the acquisition gets more attention to its history than the main company does.

TAKEAWAY

The best aspect of Freeport McMoRan’s site is the great use of high-quality photos that clearly convey the company’s products and scope.

Does your Web site’s “About Us” section accurately convey your organization’s history and capabilities? Every two weeks we evaluate one example, grading it in three areas that are key to potential customers: Personality (Who are you?), Products/Services (What can you do for us?), and Accessibility (How can we reach you?). Contact us if you’d like to have your site evaluated—there’s no charge and no obligation.

Today’s example was chosen at random; CorporateHistory.net has no ties to this company.

Saving Scrapbooks for History

If you want to see an archivist cringe (but who would?), hand her a scrapbook. Sure, scrapbooks are often full of artifacts, but items are likely to tear and crumble at the slightest touch.

In the archiving projects undertaken by CorporateHistory.net, we’ve helped rescue more than a few scrapbooks that illuminate company history. One yielded a telegram from Teddy Roosevelt to flag company executive Louis Annin Ames. It’s not a document that will change the course of American history, but we and the Annin company were excited to discover it. (Annin & Co., Inc., America’s oldest flag maker, is still going strong into the sixth generation.)

With this in mind, it was heartening to read that Woody Guthrie’s scrapbooks are being restored thanks to an $80,000 grant from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services. Apparently the great songwriter saved everything from letters to lyrics to utility bills. Better yet, you can even decipher his handwriting (he trained as a sign painter in his youth). Pages from the albums will illustrate an upcoming book about Guthrie by his daughter Nora, and the Guthrie Foundation and Archives hopes to mount a traveling display soon. Guthrie would have turned 100 in 2013.

“About Us” Evaluation: Movado Gets a D

Movado is famed for the “Museum Watch,” whose face has a single gold dot at the 12:00 spot, and which was the first watch displayed at the Museum of Modern Art. The company’s roots go back to Switzerland in 1881, although the company’s headquarters are now in Paramus, NJ. The Movado Group designs, manufactures, and distributes luxury timepieces (Movado, Concord, Ebel, ESQ) and fashion watches (Coach, Hugo Boss, Juicy Couture, Lacoste, Tommy Hilfiger). Its About Us page is here.

OVERALL GRADE: D

The main About Us page and all the sub-pages have black text in a center box with a scroll bar, set in a sea of white space. We are always inexpressibly annoyed at this sort of set-up. It makes it difficult to skim the page or to refer back to earlier material on it. And it wastes prime territory: why are there no photos of the watches on these pages? The LVMH Group did a spectacular job with a similar set-up.

Accessibility: C

The Contact Us page is adequate, offering the option to visit the pages of different brands, to contact a service center, or to write or call the company headquarters.

Personality: D

Movado’s About Us pages are stark black and white, without personality. The only exception is a reprint (in black and white, without illustrations) of a 2003 article from Watch Time on Movado Group founder Gerry Grinberg. Once we scrolled through page after page of tiny type, we learned that Grinberg played an important role in the history of luxury watch sales in the United States. Why not give this more attention? And why not feature newer material? Eight years is an eternity in Web time.

Products/Services: E

It is inexcusable not to have images of watches produced by Movado on the About Us pages, as well as on the separate pages for each brand. Would we click an extra link to look at an unfamiliar brand? Probably not. Would we click that link if we saw a photo of a gorgeous watch next to the link? Well, yes.

TAKEAWAY

By not including photos, Movado loses a great opportunity to entice viewers to look at its products.

Does your Web site’s “About Us” section accurately convey your organization’s history and capabilities? Every two weeks we evaluate one example, grading it in three areas that are key to potential customers: Personality (Who are you?), Products/Services (What can you do for us?), and Accessibility (How can we reach you?). Contact us if you’d like to have your site evaluated—there’s no charge and no obligation.

Today’s example was chosen at random; CorporateHistory.net has no ties to this company.

How Not to Engage an Audience

“Stand up so we can embarrass you,” the keynote speaker said with a booming laugh as he approached a table of business owners. I shook my head and thought: “Did he really say that?” This took place at a networking breakfast sponsored by a large company with which CorporateHistory.net does business.

Obviously the speaker was trying hard to engage a fairly sleepy audience, something his wordy PowerPoint slides hadn’t done. He did get people to stand up and talk. I found him heavy-handed, but then I always prefer an appeal to the brain rather than an elbow in the ribs; give me Monty Python over Mel Brooks any day. Seeking a reality check, I turned to public speaking expert and speechwriting teacher Joan Detz. Here’s her reply:

“'Stand up so we can embarrass you!’ Well, Marian, if I had been there to hear it, I’d have slunk to the back door and disappeared! My guess is: Even though a few people stood up and participated, many more were sitting there uncomfortable –- feeling ‘relieved’ only when that portion of the presentation was over with.”

Thank you, Joan! P.S. A few days after the breakfast, a participant emailed the rest of us to voice his disappointment. He wished that the speaker’s time had been devoted to meeting other participants. In short, a subpar speaker dragged down an otherwise useful event.

About Us” Evaluation: Kemet Gets an A+

Kemet became an independent company in 1990, after 71 years as a subsidiary of Union Carbide. Originally it produced a crucial part for vacuum tubes. After the invention of the transistor, its facilities were retooled to manufacture capacitors. Kemet, headquartered in South Carolina, has manufacturing facilities in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. The main About Us page is here.

OVERALL GRADE: A+

Products/Services: A+
Kemet’s main About Us page is a top-notch history page: an essay with narrative flow that covers all major aspects of the company since 1919. There are passing references to the role of the company on the world scene (Kemet capacitors used in vacuum tubes during World War II, in the Apollo moon landing, etc.), but the focus is on the company’s products, growth, IPO, consolidation, and manufacturing facilities.
The page begins with an introduction that stresses Kemet’s passion for quality and customer service, and ends by noting that Kemet produces billions of capacitors per year. Every sentence of the page not only tells the company’s history, but helps sell the product. And despite the highly abstruse nature of the product, we are never overwhelmed with technical jargon.

The only suggestion we’d make (and we’ve make this one so often that we feel like an echo of an echo) is that the essay could benefit from some illustrations. A decade ago, we were grateful when companies didn’t assume we had a fast enough connection to download photos. But this is 2011, and now we’re bored when we don’t get at least a few graphics to break up large blocks of text. Surely a company nearly 100 years old has some archival photos that would make a fascinating accompaniment to its history.

Accessibility: A+
Rarely do we see Contact Us pages that are novel as well as effective: Kemet’s contact page is both. Rather than a list of names and addresses, it lets the reader choose one of several statements: “I need some literature on one of your products,” “I would like sample parts sent to me,” etc. Each statement is linked to an appropriate page. If you want product literature, for example, you’re sent to a page where you can check off items and submit a request. At the foot of the main Contact page (but still “above the fold” for most screens) are the addresses and phone numbers for corporate headquarters and subsidiary offices.

Personality: A
We like the Leadership Team page, which offers 4- to 5-line bios of Kemet’s top executives (name, title, experience, training) on a single page. For most purposes, that’s all we need to get a sense of who’s in charge. The “group” photo of all the executives standing in a row was clearly Photoshopped, but gives a nice impression that all of them work cheerfully together.

The only page on the Kemet site that we disliked was Guiding Principles, which appears as a flash presentation that can’t be paused or printed. Why not offer an option for a print version or one whose speed the viewer can control?

TAKEAWAY
The text of Kemet’s history page could be used as a model for many companies, both for its narrative flow and for the way it covers a wide range of points without ever becoming lost in technical detail. Kemet’s Contact Us page ranks as one of the best we’ve seen for deftly directing visitors to the information they want.

Does your Web site’s “About Us” section accurately convey your organization’s history and capabilities? Every two weeks we evaluate one example, grading it in three areas that are key to potential customers: Personality (Who are you?), Products/Services (What can you do for us?), and Accessibility (How can we reach you?). Contact us if you’d like to have your site evaluated—there’s no charge and no obligation.

Today’s example was chosen at random; CorporateHistory.net has no ties to this company.