The Index of corporate online effectiveness is a once-a-year snapshot of how well the world’s largest companies by market capitalisation use their websites, mobile and social channels, and apps to support their business objectives.

1. 8Highlights from the Index: eighth edition

2. © Bowen Craggs & Co 2015 1
contents
Overview 3
What marks out the top performers? 7
Buried treasures 8
Why are some still getting it wrong? 9
The mini-boom in corporate social media 11
What to do about mobile 13
Overall rankings 14
Top performers:
serving society 16
serving investors 18
serving the media 20
serving jobseekers 22
serving customers 24
What our clients say 25
What we do 27

3. ‘This is about much more than
corporate communications –
it is about the way giant companies
speak to the world’
Read more of our insight and analysis at www.bowencraggs.com/Our-thinking
© Bowen Craggs & Co 2015 2

4. overview
The world’s largest companies own magic devices that allow them to talk to half of humanity at trivial cost –
and few of them know what to do with them.
The eighth edition of the Financial Times Bowen Craggs Index of corporate online
effectiveness shows that far from coming to a consensus about how they should
be using their websites and social media channels, there is more variety than ever
© Bowen Craggs & Co 2015 3
among the biggest businesses in the world.
The Index, which has been running since 2007, judges corporate websites and social
media channels of the 80 largest companies in the world. However, this is about much
more than corporate communications – it is about the way giant companies speak to the
world. Call it group-level marketing, and it suddenly seems more important.

5. Only a handful of companies in the Index come close to using online channels as they might, and the gap
between those who get it and those who don’t is widening.
At the same time, a few top performers are getting increasingly slick. They are
marked out by:
• A refusal to go along with trends – they do things because they are appropriate. BP
and Total have relaunched their sites with profoundly unfashionable left menu
navigation. But they work.
• A belief that they must not be boring. General Electric has some terrific magazine-style
material, exploiting multimedia with verve.
• An understanding that the internet is the most flexible medium ever invented, and
using a corporate site for one purpose is to abuse it. Apple.com is fantastic at serving
consumers; pretty useless for other groups.
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After several years of being outshone by social media, websites are now back at the centre.
Top performers see that ‘social media’ are really a set of individual channels that
complement the website.
LinkedIn is often best for communicating the company’s attractions for jobseekers,
Facebook for corporate social responsibility messaging for customers, jobseekers and the
general public. Slideshare is useful for posting content for investors and analysts.
YouTube and Flickr are often used as extensions of the corporate website – essentially
integrated channels for publishing further information about the company, rather
than truly ‘social’ media, inviting interaction. Real social media channels – Facebook,
LinkedIn, Twitter – need careful, active management. As with everything about the web,
proper governance is what marks the good from the bad.

7. ‘As with everything about the web,
proper governance is what marks
the good use of social media from
the bad’
View our full, interactive results table at www.bowencraggs.com/FT-Bowen-Craggs-Index
© Bowen Craggs & Co 2015 6

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What marks out the top performers?
The top five
Shell: A highly coherent web estate, with country and business sites sharing content and
functionality – its exceptional management pushes it to the top.
Eni: Good looking and well managed, it serves all its audiences with thoroughness
and panache.
Nestlé: The global site buzzes with interesting ideas, many relating to reputation
management, that have pushed it steadily up the Index.
Unilever: This is a highly coordinated global web estate that is used with great effect to
transmit the CEO’s vision on sustainability.
Siemens: The specially commissioned online videos are long established but still effective
– an early example of the ‘stories’ that are now so fashionable but originally an example of
Siemens’ preparedness to go against the trend.

9. Bayer: A model for those needing to hold a complex web estate together. A set of tools
at the top of each page allows quick navigation to different areas, while a (rare) effective
search engine gives quick access to specifics.
GSK: A relaunched global site is notable for the way it is actively managed – recently for
its prominent links to coverage of its China crisis, as well as Ebola.
SABMiller: A newcomer to the Index with a slick new site that puts stories at the centre.
SAP: Last year’s number one has slipped on a range of detail issues, but its approach to
navigation is still remarkable – it is not conventional, but it works.
General Electric: A mass of strong magazine-style material, some with an understanding
that old-fashioned editorial skills still count.
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Buried treasures

10. Too many companies have been swept along by fashion, sacrificing ease of use
for navigation that owes much to social media or news sites, but is unsuitable for
complex and deep corporate sites.
ExxonMobil’s new site is the most egregious example. The main devices for moving
around are dropdown menus that open on click and scrolling down the page to find links.
More surprisingly, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, which was previously a model of
usability, has gone down a similar route – click, scroll, click, scroll. Why?
Poor management of web estates as single entities is another problem. The worst offenders
here are IT companies (though US banks feature too). Click around the web estates of
Oracle, Google, Microsoft, Intel or Apple, and you can easily find yourself in unfamiliar
territory cut off from your starting point.
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Why are some still getting it wrong?

11. ‘Knowing when not to create a
social media page is one mark of
a well-run estate’
Find out how we help many of the world’s largest companies to improve their online communications at
www.bowencraggs.com/About-us
© Bowen Craggs & Co 2015 10

12. Big companies might well be relieved that the emphasis on social media is in
decline. So it is curious that far from keeping away from group-level social
media pages, we are seeing a mini-boom. In the last three years corporate
communications departments in HQ have launched their own Facebook pages, and
have been astonished by their popularity.
But big numbers of ‘likes’ do not necessarily equate with success. Sometimes these
companies’ pages seem like a strange battleground, with each side firing past the other.
‘Social media management’ has become a skill in its own right, but there are still too
many companies where website and social media are run separately, and where new
channels pop up without control. Knowing when not to create a social media page is
one mark of a well-run estate.
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The mini-boom in corporate social media

13. ‘Going responsive can certainly be the
right path, but some companies have
managed to damage desktop usability
while switching to responsive’
Read more about mobile optimisation and other key topics at
www.bowencraggs.com/Our-thinking/Commentaries
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14. In the past two years, companies have rushed to make their sites mobile-friendly.
The Index provides the evidence, with the big story being that 40 per cent (29 of 78
sites), are now responsive: they reformat automatically according to the screen size.
The next group, 21 companies, have done nothing. Then there are 18 with separate
mobile sites – most long-established but not all. Finally, eight companies have mixes.
The real division, however, is between companies that have thought what is right
for them, those who haven’t really considered it, and those who have followed fashion for
its own sake.
Going responsive can certainly be the right path, but some companies have managed to
damage desktop usability while switching to responsive. The slogan ‘mobile first’ has a lot
to answer for.
© Bowen Craggs & Co 2015 13
What to do about mobile

15. Ranking Company Ranking Company Ranking Company Ranking Company
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overall rankings
Royal Dutch Shell
Eni
Nestlé
Unilever
Siemens
Roche
British American
Tobacco
BP
SAP
Novartis
SABMiller
BASF
GSK
Novo Nordisk
Bayer
Daimler AG
L’Oréal
Barclays
Sanofi
Google
Rio Tinto
AstraZeneca
HSBC
IBM
1
2
2
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
10
12
12
14
15
16
16
18
19
20
20
22
22
22
22
26
27
27
27
30
30
30
33
33
35
35
37
37
39
39
41
42
42
44
44
46
47
Microsoft
Coca-Cola
BG Group
Goldman Sachs
Statoil
Chevron
Commonwealth Bank
of Australia
Vodafone
General Electric
Wal-Mart Stores
Comcast
Vale
BNP Paribas
Qualcomm
E.ON
Total
Westpac
Cisco Systems
Gazprom
BHP Billiton
Philip Morris
International
Intel Corporation
Procter & Gamble
47
49
49
51
51
53
53
55
55
55
58
58
60
60
62
63
63
65
66
66
68
69
69
71
Sberbank of Russia
Johnson & Johnson
Verizon
Communications
Citigroup
Schlumberger
Telefónica
Toyota
Apple
PepsiCo
Pfizer
Samsung Electronics
Wells Fargo
Bank of America
Merck
Volkswagen
Anheuser-Busch InBev
Oracle
ExxonMobil
AT&T
Petrobras
JPMorgan Chase & Co
Ambev
Saudi Basic Industries
Rosneft
72
73
73
75
76
77
78
Royal Bank of Canada
Banco Santander
LVMH
Industrial & Commercial
Bank of China
China Mobile
China Shenhua Energy
CNOOC
Newcomers shown in italics

16. ‘Nestlé’s global site buzzes with
interesting ideas, many relating to
reputation management, that have
pushed it steadily up the Index’
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More

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Top performers: serving society
Eni
SABMiller
Unilever
Bayer
BP
British American Tobacco
Chevron
Coca-Cola
General Electric
Nestlé
Sanofi
Total
This component of our analysis focuses on three areas:
• Corporate governance – a topic that Eni signposts particularly prominently and covers
in impressive depth and breadth.
• Serving CSR professionals with non-financial performance data – where Unilever is an
exemplar in terms of clarity, scope and presentation of content.
• Building a reputation for responsibility – which SABMiller’s new site does exceptionally
well by putting engaging reputation-boosting stories front and centre.

18. ‘Good looking and well managed,
Eni’s online estate serves
all its audiences with thoroughness
and panache’
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More

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Top performers: serving investors
Royal Dutch Shell
Vodafone
BP
Eni
Sanofi
Barclays
Nestlé
Statoil
Unilever
BASF
British American Tobacco
SAP
Siemens
This part of Bowen Craggs’ analysis covers three aspects of online investor relations:
• Service for analysts who know the company – an area in which Vodafone and Citigroup
excel, due to their deep archives of clearly presented and comprehensive results materials.
• Service for analysts researching the company
– where Shell and Eni stand out, due to their exceptional arrays of background resources.
• Service for private investors – something that Sanofi does best thanks to approachable
content and useful tools.

20. ‘Comcast’s site provides thoughtfully
curated and mobile-optimised
briefing information for journalists’
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More

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Top performers: serving the media
Siemens
Eni
Gazprom
Novo Nordisk
Cisco Systems
Comcast
Daimler
Nestlé
Royal Dutch Shell
This part of our analysis is divided into sub-categories:
• Usefulness of the press release service – where Siemens and Cisco are top, due to their
powerful search tools and rich content.
• Keeping in touch with journalists – through comprehensive contact details, where
Gazprom and Siemens excel; and useful news alert services, as Shell provides.
• Background on the company – via thoughtfully curated briefing information, as
Comcast offers.
• Quality of the image library – where BASF is among those providing a particularly rich
choice of high-quality, logically categorised photographs.

22. ‘Polished design and a huge stock
of staff profiles provide an unusual
feeling of class in Goldman Sachs’
careers section’
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More

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Top performers: Serving jobseekers
Google
Goldman Sachs
HSBC
Intel Corporation
Microsoft
Novo Nordisk
Unilever
This part of our analysis has three sub-metrics:
• Central handling of online vacancies – where Google is the top performer, due to
a powerful bespoke jobs search and application system that boasts a range of useful,
innovative features.
• Quality of information for college leavers – where Goldman Sachs and HSBC outstrip
others, thanks to their engaging employee profiles, clear advice and other material to
inform and enthuse potential recruits.
• Added-value features – such as Goldman Sachs’ useful and sophisticated interactive
careers quiz and Google’s video tours of offices around the world.

24. ‘Technology firms and banks lead the
way for serving customers online’
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More

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Top performers: serving customers
Microsoft
Apple
Royal Dutch Shell
Vodafone
BASF
Commonwealth Bank of Australia
Oracle
Sberbank of Russia
We examine three aspects of online service for customers:
• Customer ‘journeys’ – where Microsoft, Shell, Vodafone and Oracle are among the
top performers.
• Quality of information and tools to aid customer decision-making – an area in which
Microsoft, along with Google, Johnson & Johnson and Merck, lead the way.
• Completion/onward customer journeys – where Apple, as well as Sberbank of Russia
are exemplars.

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What our clients say
1
‘Bowen Craggs helps us better position our online communications at a
corporate level’
José Martin,
Head of global brand design, ING
2
‘It’s a really useful way for us to understand how to improve our website
for our business and our customers’
Simon Quayle,
Director of digital communications, GSK
3 ‘A great source for all trends and what’s happening in the market
and for benchmarking’
Florian Hiessl,
Head of online communications, Siemens

27. 4
‘They help us to build a strategy on the web
at a worldwide level’
Philippe Koechlin,
Digital media manager, Total
5 ‘An independant view of best practice for the corporate website including
a practical critique of designs on which we are currently working’
Neil Atkinson,
Head of global communication channels, Unilever
To hear testimonials in full, please watch our video
www.bowencraggs.com/About-us

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What we do
www.bowencraggs.com/What-we-do
The world is awash with online communications advice. But digital is different at group
level. Applying received wisdom derived from elsewhere can do more harm than good.
Bowen Craggs is unique: we specialise in group-level digital communications. Here are
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