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.
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