Monday, March 30, 2015

Dr Pepper Snapple Group: “About Us” Evaluation by Corporate History.net

Dr Pepper Snapple Group (DPS) is one of the world’s leading beverage companies and the top producer of flavored carbonated soft drinks in the Americas. A publicly traded company headquartered in Plano, Texas, DPS has 21 manufacturing centers, over 115 distribution centers, and about 19,000 employees. Through a century-long sequence of mergers and acquisitions, the company’s brands include A&W Root Beer, 7Up, Hawaiian Punch, Nantucket Nectars, Sunkist, Schweppes, and of course, Dr Pepper (created in 1885) and Snapple (created in 1973). The main About Us page is Our Company.

OVERALL GRADE: B
The DPS site suffers from a tendency toward elegance at the expense of functionality. We first noticed it on the Awards page, which has many pretty pictures, but no text related to awards. Then we accidentally discovered that hovering over a photo reveals text. And then we felt we had to try hovering over every image on every page, just in case we were missing something. Yes, the bold graphic look of images without text is elegant, but marketing mavens know that captions are one of the most-read elements on any page. It’s a waste not to have captions on permanent display, ideally in service to company history. At the very, very least, a “hover here for more info” graphic will ensure that visitors realize text is available.

Products/Services: C
The main About Us page has five teasers (brands, investing, sustainability, operations, mission) in a sensible layout with well-chosen photos. Unfortunately, the page lacks a concise statement of DPS’s nature and purpose. Plenty of relevant information appears on the Operations, Mission, Leadership Team, and History pages, but for visitors who get no further, a summary should appear on the main About Us page.

The History page offers some good corporate storytelling. Why not make it more vivid with vintage ads or logos of some of the DPS beverages that have been popular for decades? Given that DPS is a conglomeration of brands, an illustrated timeline might work even better than a narrative.

Our Commandment 10 of About Us pages is, “Remember to keep holy the updates.” The last tweets on the Our Company page are a year old! However, the site’s home page has an active Twitter feed, so apparently this glitch just means that no one at DPS has cast a critical eye on Our Company for quite a while.

Speaking of discrepancies: why does the Mission page have no obvious relation to the Values page? Why does Our Operations introduce “Rapid Continuous Improvement (RCI),” which seems like a either value or a way to implement a mission, but isn’t mentioned elsewhere? Our Commandment 9 of About Us pages is, “Worship clarity.” That includes looking for discrepancies throughout the site and adjusting the focus on business history as needed. Sites as large as DPS’s require frequent checking to make sure they remain internally consistent.

Personality: A
At the foot of the main About Us page, in a carousel display, are company leaders, each with a photo, name, title, and link to a full bio. This is a welcome innovation. The bios are top notch: they mention not just where the person has worked, but what he contributed at each job. (Alas, there are no female executives at this level.)

Bravo also to the FAQ (available from the Contact page), which presents just the sort of questions that consumers with inquiring minds like to ask: “Why is it called ‘cream soda’?” “What exactly is Dr. Pepper?” “Did Yogi Berra ever own Yoo-hoo?”

Accessibility: C
The Contact page (accessed via a link in the footer) is sparse but adequate: USPS and phone information for 5 different departments, plus a form for sending an email for half a dozen different reasons (consumer questions, media inquiries, potential suppliers, etc.). This would be an ideal place to encourage interaction on social media, but the social media icons are confined to tiny print in the footer.

TAKEAWAY
The main About Us page should always have a quick summary of your company as well as great pics and teasers, for the sake of visitors who choose not to explore any other pages. And always, always, always check that pages within your site are consistent and coherent.

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.


Monday, March 16, 2015

Omaha Steaks: “About Us” Evaluation by Corporate History.net

In 1898, the Simon brothers landed at Ellis Island after fleeing religious persecution in Eastern Europe. A transcontinental train took them to Nebraska, which looked like their native Latvia. There they resumed their profession as butchers, founding their own company in 1917 to provide high-quality beef to restaurants and grocers. In time they expanded to mail order, retail locations, and sales via telephone and Internet. Today the company – one of America’s largest marketers of beef – is privately held and run by the fourth and fifth generations of Simons. Its 1,800 employees are still based in Omaha. The main About Us page is Our Company, accessed via About / Company Info in the footer of every page.

OVERALL GRADE: A

Products/Services: A
Omaha Steaks has condensed most of their About Us material into one page, Our Company. It includes a pithy summary of the company: its business, location, divisions (with links to each), and employees. Sidebars left and right illustrate the company’s mouth-watering products, offer testimonials, and provide contact information. Our Commandment 7 of About Us pages is, “Keep navigation easy.” Omaha Steaks does that.

Unobtrusively positioned on the top right of Our Company is a link, “Read about our company’s heritage.” It takes visitors to a sequence of history pages: Our Beginnings, Customers Nationwide, Reputation, An Overview, and Tradition Continues. These pages make us giddy with delight.

First of all, they form a well-written narrative company history, laid out in a way that makes it easy to get through them all. (If all this information had been squashed onto one page, how many visitors would have made it to the end?) Second, the text covers all the bases: the who, why, and where of the company founders, the reason for the company name, the development of various forms of distribution (mail order, phone, Internet), notable awards, company divisions, and the current management. Each page is illustrated with an appropriate photo. High marks to Omaha Steaks for their corporate storytelling!

Our only quibble is that the teaser and link to the business history pages on the main About Us page should be made more enticing, perhaps by using one of the vintage images used on the history pages.

Personality: A
Our Commandment 3 of About Us pages is, “Reveal thy personality.” Surprisingly few companies do as good a job of this as Omaha Steaks. Its personality comes through very strongly in the History pages, which start by describing the founders and finish by stating that the fourth and fifth generations of the same family are now running the company.

Accessibility: A
Omaha Steaks does much of their business online or by phone, and they make it easy to order. The header has a toll-free number, store locations, and a live chat option. The footer has a link to a Customer Care page that offers all these options.

TAKEAWAY
Let a well-written corporate history explain why your products are so good and make visitors to your site eager to deal with you.

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.


Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Garda World Security: “About Us” Evaluation by Corporate History.net

Garda World Security was founded in 1995 by Stephan Cretier, using money from a second mortgage on his home. Headquartered in Montreal, it is now one of the world’s ten largest security providers – notably of armored cars and security guards. Garda has more than 200 offices in the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. It is also one of the top three cash logistics brands in North America, handling more than $5 billion (!) every day. The main About Us page is here.

OVERALL GRADE: B

Products/Services: C
The main About Us page – the one that the About link in the footer leads to – gives a good summary of Garda’s purpose and its global reach. But as an introduction to the site and to Garda company history in general, it’s weak. The top of this page (and several others in the About Us section) is occupied by an image that fills most of the space on a desktop screen. Here, it’s a scene of a highway at night that has no obvious relation to Garda.

The size of the photo is a serious problem because the left-hand navigation menu is tacked onto it, so the menu that should entice visitors is out of sight once they scroll down to the page’s text.

And there are more problems. The divisions of the company aren’t mentioned in the text of the main About Us page. Why not have photos with captions as teasers? The links within the text to other pages on the site are formatted in a discretely elegant way that makes them easy to miss.

Another problem: on the main About Us page, the menu options are Our Businesses, Locations, News and Media, and Careers. But in the footer of every page, the About menu offers the choices of Our Team, Fast Facts, Our History, Governance, and Garda in the Community. The inconsistency is confusing.

Personality: A
The Our Team page starts off right with a bio of Stephan Cretier (Garda’s founder, chairman, president and CEO) that sets out how he founded the company and segues into its current global scope. Nice use of corporate storytelling!

We do cavil at some of the phrasing. For example: “Named ‘Entrepreneur of the Decade’ by Profit Magazine in 2011 as one of eleven remarkable Canadian CEOs, Stephan Cretier is ...”: was Cretier the Entrepreneur of the Decade, or one of eleven remarkable Canadian CEOs, or both? Our Commandment 9 of About Us pages is “Worship clarity.” That includes making sure that every sentence is unambiguous.

Accessibility: B
A red Contact Us bar at the foot of every page allows visitors to send an email. The Contact page (accessible via the footer) offers only an online form for contact. Clicking the link within the text to Locations takes us to a page that has phones and addresses. But the existence of that page isn’t obvious due to the annoyingly subtle format used for links.

TAKEAWAY
Take care to make navigation easy and obvious, and never be elegant at the expense of ease of use. Your business history deserves to be easily accessible.

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.