What the index judges

How the ranking works and companies are chosen for inclusion

The Index is a ranking – in fact it is many rankings – but the real aim is not to stimulate praise, blame or panic, but to show what should be done (and what should not be done) to make a website as effective as possible.

A large company’s web presence is an expensive thing – companies brave enough to tot up the total may find it runs into tens of millions of dollars a year. Yet return on investment is almost impossible to calculate. In fact, it is impossible. But with the web now becoming a mass medium in the developed world, and growing at a giddy rate elsewhere, it is an essential part of the communications mix.

What is needed is a way of judging whether a web estate is as good as it can be – that is, it is doing all the things it could be doing, as well as it can do them. And – at least as important – to see who is doing better so that best practice can be observed and adopted or adapted. These are the jobs the FT Bowen Craggs Index is attempting to do.

Unique index

This Index is unlike other rankings for two main reasons. First, it takes an overall view. Rather than concentrating on a particular element, it looks at the different (and often complex) jobs a site is asked to do, and assesses how well it does them. The advantage with corporate sites is that although there are considerable differences in emphasis, these tasks are pretty much the same for all. Second, our methodology is based on the judgement of experts, rather than a ‘check box’ approach: websites are too complex to be measured in a simple way (see Methodology for more).

Expanded constituency

This year the index again covers 75 companies: the top 25 in the FT Global 500 – ranked by market capitalisation – from each of the US, Europe and Rest of world (including Russia). Six of the newcomers are from Rest of world and include the first companies from India and Mexico respectively to appear in the index. The six debutants from the US and Europe include high-profile names such as Apple and Volkswagen, and the first from Norway, StatoilHydro. A dozen companies featured in 2008 no longer meet the market cap criteria, so have been dropped; eight of them are banks or other financial services companies.

Whether your company features in the Index or not you can order your own Index report.