Are You Ignoring One of Your Key Assets for Building Corporate Reputation?

The health of those relationships is a CEO and board-level responsibility, with corporate communications in charge of refining the narrative and messages.

Senior leaders often view the corporate website as separate from the reputation strategy

This is odd, because a well-run global web presence – which is likely to have annual visits in the six and seven figures – should play a core role in all strategic narratives underpinning reputation: “we have cutting edge products and services”; “we are innovative”; “we are a great employer”; “we are a good global citizen”.

Yet the fact is that many senior leaders see reputation building taking place primarily in marketing and public relations (and indeed see communications itself primarily through the prism of media relations).

It’s difficult to shift these opinions, but the most convincing arguments are backed by strong data.

Corporate websites are good at changing a company’s reputation for the better

Bowen Craggs visitor research, which is based on surveys running on the websites of some of the largest companies in the world, measures a respondent’s feelings about a company before and after a visit to the corporate website – whether favourable, neutral or unfavourable.

What we see in the figures is that the website is a powerful tool for:

• Reinforcing already favourable perceptions: On average 66% of favourable visitors leave the corporate website feeling better.
• Converting visitors with neutral feelings: On average 28% of neutral visitors leave with better perceptions.
• Turning around those with unfavourable perceptions: On average 12% of unfavourable visitors leave the corporate website with a positive view of the company.

And yet the vast majority of companies do not take the time to ask their stakeholders a few simple questions that would help them make significant improvements in the effectiveness of their digital communications.

Are you ready to make a data-driven case to your CEO?

Get in touch for more information about how Bowen Craggs visitor research can help optimise your organisation’s corporate digital channels.