. . . Effective websites essential for business growth, says Phillips Consulting
Ben Uzor Jr
It did not come as a surprise to most Information Communication Technology (ICT) savvy people as Zenith Bank Plc once again emerged the overall winner of the Web Jurist award, instituted by the website rating agency of Philip Consulting Limited. The rating is meant to check the effectiveness, aesthetics, user-friendliness and information content of various websites in the country.
Announcing the results during the Nigeria-South Africa Chamber of Commerce monthly breakfast forum in Lagos last week, Phillips Consultants, also named the Etisalat’s website as the overall best in the telecommunications industry. In this year’s survey of the seven telecoms firm’s, Etisalat Nigeria ranked high in six areas used to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of a business website.
Beyond every reasonable doubt, Zenith Bank has acquired a reputation for the deployment of cutting edge Information and Communication Technology to drive its processes. The bank’s name has featured prominently at the top of the annual web jurist survey since inception. The bank has remained consistent in the quality of service delivery via its website. Apart from being the winner in the overall website effectiveness category, the financial institution’s website also won in the following categories: Most operational site (technical aspects), most captivating site (customer experience).
Oluwaseun Ngonnase, senior consultant, technology group, Phillips Consulting, told Business Day in an exclusive interview that the web evaluation process was developed strategically for the purpose of evaluating websites to determine effectiveness through benchmarking with local and global peers. According to him, the evaluation processes would assist businesses to identify best practice, suggests improvement strategies and act as a catalyst for constructive, value-added e-business growth.
Ngonnase pointed out that businesses can better widen their market share as well as expand their customer base on a global scale by developing websites that can become a major marketing tool. He admonished businesses to leverage the power of technology, which saw ordinary ideas like Facebook, Google turn into multi-billion dollar businesses. Web-Jurist, in arriving at the rating, uses a combination of experienced e-business consultants and a rigorous and comprehensive rating methodology.
It assesses websites using six high-level categories namely, website content, user experience, performance, technical aspect, aesthetics and online service quality. Website content refers to the accuracy, freshness and presentation of the site; User experience refers to the quality of the user interface from a functional and aesthetics point of view; performance refers to the speed, reliability and findability and the ease with which all types of users, including those with physical or visual impairment, can find and access the site; technical aspect refers to the navigation, functionality and security of the site; aesthetics refers to the design principle and brand consistency of the site.
The Web-Jurist also assess the quality of the sites content in terms of spelling, grammar and case-consistency while it also assess the transactional capability of the site, as well as product quality and extent of value-added services.
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