Favicons: mini branding opportunities
August 21, 2007
While browsing the FTSE 100 corporate sites this week, I was struck by how few use a favicon - less than 30%.
For those who don’t know, a favicon is the tiny icon that represents your site in the address bar (next to the URL), or in someone’s list of favourites or bookmarked sites, or in the tabs of a tabbed browser, such as Firefox or IE7. You should see one for this site - a small tick.
It is a tiny piece of web estate - 16px by 16px - but why not use it to reinforce the brand?
Most of those favicons I found today are immediately identifiable - I’ve put them in the image, above. Obviously those high street brands which have been heavily advertised have an advantage here. But every time the favicons are seen, it reinforces the brand of that company. Given how valuable every pixel can be on, say, a home page, it would seem a mistake to ignore this tiny square of space, which, after all, is available, and can’t be used - yet - by anyone else. Though, thinking about it - how long until people sell their favicon space for advertising?
Dan Taylor has an interesting article about use of favicons at his blog Fabric of Folly, in which he discusses the various approaches that could be taken to designing a favicon. Definitely worth reading if you’re thinking of implementing one.
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TNT: third party comments available
August 18, 2007
Are you confident that all the news published about your company is good news - or, at least, that there aren’t going to be any unpleasant surprises?
TNT display confidence in themselves as they publish reports written by external sources about themselves on their own site.
Provision of this kind of third party news and comment about a company can be a useful source of information for both investors and other journalists, and certainly makes their research easier.
TNT will naturally review all mentions of themselves in the newspapers and other journals, and I trust that there is no veto on publishing critical third party news articles on the TNT site.
Just as important as reviewing the newspapers and financial journals for mention of your company is review of what is being said online. Does your company have someone who monitors what bloggers and other online commentators are saying? Did you pick up this post through a Google Alert?
Please contact me if you would like more information on how best to monitor what is being reported about your company online.
Share charts in accessible formats
August 15, 2007
Why not provide your share charts for investors in accessible formats?
Halfords provide large font charts, and charts for people who are colour blind. Given that many investors must need charts of this nature, this seems like a good and helpful service.
I notice that Serco, who used to be among my favourite examples of companies who did this, because they even included an option for a chart accessible to voice browsers, have now removed all these accessible charting options. I wonder why?
Serco’s accessible charting, dated six or so months ago.
The same page today.
Investor information available anywhere
August 13, 2007
Increasingly, listed companies are providing their share price and news available to people on their desktop, PDA or mobile.
This means that investors and journalists can find out the latest information without necessarily being tied to their computer. Aviva have had this service available for a while now - as have some others.
As a rather different approach, Reckitt Benckiser offer a desktop share price tracker on their corporate home page. This stays on the desktop when the original window closes, and updates periodically when the share price changes. So you could move on with the day’s tasks, without having to return to the mother site.
Smiths Group: Contact Us
August 10, 2007
It is common practice to provide some sort of contact information for the investor relations personnel on the corporate website. This is often simply a ‘bucket’ email address, such as investorrelations@companyname.com.
Providing named email addresses, and possibly photos of the investor relations team helps; Smiths Group go one step further, and indicate which members of the team should be contacted about which subjects. This is very helpful indeed - and stops one member of the IR team having to forward phone calls and messages to the other members.