Monday, October 20, 2014

Quest Diagnostics: “About Us” Evaluation by Corporate History.net

Quest Diagnostics is the world’s leading provider of diagnostic testing services. The company works with about half the physicians and hospitals in the U.S., and has operations in the U.K., Mexico, Brazil, Puerto Rico, and India. Headquartered in Madison, N.J., Quest has some 43,000 employees and over $7.5  billion in annual revenue.  It is on the Fortune 500 and the S&P 500, and since 2008 has been on Fortune’s “World’s Most Admired Companies” list. The main About Us page is Our Company.

OVERALL GRADE: A minus

Products/Services: A
The main About Us page has an attractive photo and four subheads, each with an illustration and a link to further information: Our Products and Services, Facts and Figures, Innovation Center, and Locations around the World. Each of these sub-pages is also well designed; together they convey a strong business history. The Our Products and Services page, for example, has a simple list of the major areas in which Quest offers products, with summaries and links to even more specific information.  Kudos to Quest: it’s surprisingly, regrettably rare to see this sort of logical, hierarchical organization carried out well.

The other pages on the left-hand navigation menu follow through on this promise. Our Brands is a summary of Quest subsidiaries, with the logo of each company and a paragraph about its specialty. The Fact Sheet is also well done, with subheads for Company Overview (a summary of the company, which incidentally should be copied to the main About Us page as well), At a Glance (statistics on Quest’s size and global reach), Recognition (rankings and awards), Products and Services (links to drug screening, clinical trials, etc.), and Global Presence.

Once in a while the navigation gets confusing: on the Innovations page, for example, there’s no left-hand menu to return us to other About Us pages. But overall Quest’s pages are a good example of our Commandment 5 of About Us pages: “Honor thy readers and their attention spans.” The text is short, to the point, easy to read, and well organized in terms of visuals and text.

One cavil: Nowhere in this material can we easily find the founding year. Other web sources cite it as 1967, under the name Metropolitan Pathology Laboratory, Inc. A bit of information on the name change and evolution to Quest Diagnostics might make for good corporate storytelling.

Personality: B
The green-on-white color scheme suggests cleanliness, which is desirable  for a company involved in sticking people with needles. However, we can’t find any information on who runs the company, so as regards personality, we’re left with a rather ... sterile impression.

Accessibility: A
The Contact Us page lists 8 different reasons you might want to contact Quest (find a lab, get test results, leave feedback, etc.), and each has a distinct set of well-though-out options. Well done.

TAKEAWAY
Pay attention to organizing your material hierarchically: visitors to your site are more likely to hang around and to leave happy if they can find 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?). To talk about your About Us page, contact us!
Today’s example was chosen at random; CorporateHistory.net has no ties to this company.