The State of the Website

By Alan Isacson

With the availability of information about a company readily available on Facebook, LinkedIn, through its blog and by following its Twitter feed, the role of the corporate website is changing.  Previously viewed as the one-stop-shop, websites now serve more as a structural base of the company’s brand communication.

However, that doesn’t mean the corporate website is a lesser communications medium than its emerging counterparts. On the contrary, as the number of platforms and channels continues to grow, and the content distributed on them reaches farther and wider (and with dizzying frequency) the website’s new role in the communications ecosystem is to provide the big-picture.

The website is either where a visitor starts, before authenticating information elsewhere, or conversely, where a visitor verifies information gathered through social media, discussions in face-to-face meetings and articles in relevant industry journals. Either way, it should provide an overarching view of who you are, the unique business value that you bring, and how you help customers.

Here are a few tips to ensure that your website paints the big picture of your company’s value:

• Make sure your homepage content is short, and benefits oriented
• Provide customer examples, to illustrate the value of your work
• Include an RSS feed to your blog posts on the homepage, for quick access
• Imbed YouTube videos that illustrate your product or service
• Include your Twitter feed in the sidebar of your homepage, and subsequent pages

Alan Isacson is the Chief Executive Officer at ABI marketing public relations. You can reach him at +1 212-529-4755 and aisacson@abipr.com.

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