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UK Companies Could Do Much More To Engage With Web Visitors

By Bob Northgate

Sports and telecoms companies like to engage, but financial services and local government struggling to connect with web visitors

• Only 34% of companies feature a community on their website

• 15% of companies advertise their Twitter account directly on the homepage

• Just 39% update their blog on a regular basis

A benchmark study, The Engaged Web, published today reveals many online brands are not seizing the opportunity to engage with visitors to their website by not integrating with social media channels, running online communities, blogging or providing ‘sticky’and personalised content. According to the study, published by EPiServer, only a third (34%) of the eighty leading companies investigated feature a community on their website and while blogs feature on 40% of sites, only 39% update their blog on a regular basis and only 19% clearly promote it to site visitors.

The Engaged Web report, available to download from www.episerver.com, analysed 80 companies, ranked by Hitwise as being the most visited in the UK, spanning eight vertical sectors - Telecoms, Charity, Retail, Sport, Travel, Public Sector, Finance and Utilities - and scored them against a matrix of criteria for an in-depth assessment of their online engagement strategies. The criteria assessed a wide range of different components that make up an engaged website including communities, multimedia content, personalisation and social media.

The scores amongst the vertical sectors vary considerably. For example, every one of the ten sport sites feature a blog, and community and travel sites are close behind with 60% maintaining a blog to engage with their audience. Elsewhere however, the results are less impressive, with finance and telecoms failing to provide any ‘sticky’ content on their websites.

When it comes to the use of social media however, overall the scores plummet considerably, with brands seemingly failing to encourage online interaction with their... continued on page two >

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