Hundreds of organizations have joined the rush to create Web
sites for internal and external audiences. At times overlooked in
those efforts are the resources required to maintain sites: to keep
content fresh, add new features and capabilities and respond to users.
Conversations with corporations well down the road in the Web
experience reveal that dedicated teams must be put in place to manage
this new information tool.
The amount of change a site's content and look should be driven
by how visible the site is, said Don Cohen, vice chairman of InfoNow,
a Denver electronic media company that develops sites for other
companies in addition to maintaining its own site. While major and
highly visible corporations may need daily changes to their external
Internet site, smaller, less-visible companies may do well with
quarterly updates, he said.
Corporations also must plan for how they will respond to hits on
their Internet sites. "We have now gone to a weekly analysis of our
hit statistics. That is part of the ongoing maintenance issue," said
Cohen. At his company, he has taken the responsibility for responding
to the handful of queries InfoNow's site receives each day.
Other site maintenance requires one of InfoNow's 35 employees to
spend about one week per month updating content or adding new
capabilities or links to other sites.
Because of their far larger marketplace and customer bases, the
staffing resource picture is far different at Fortune 100 companies
Hewlett-Packard Co. and E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co..
H-P's Intranet Site
Hewlett-Packard's corporate communications department has had a
company-wide Intranet up and running for about one year. After
several months planning the site, it took two corporate communications
staffers and a software code writer about two months to create the
site, said Cornelia Bayley, electronic communications specialist based
at headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif.
Initially, Bayley and another corporate communications staffer
handled site updating and responding to queries. Recently, the job of
adding new information to the site has become the full-time
responsibility of another communications staffer, who receives
assistance from a computer programmer for the coding of information.
Most of source information posted on the Intranet comes from existing
documents.
Summing up H-P's experience to date, Bayley said, "One of the
things we've learned is not to underestimate the time required for
maintenance."
DuPont's Internet Site
At DuPont, Wilmington, Del., a team of five to six people is
responsible for the corporate site accessed by customers and others,
said Laird Slade, manager of plans and operations, Dupont external
affairs. These staffers spend about 50 percent of more of their time
on the home page, he said. They are supported by staffers from the
information design and development group and an information sciences
group. Each of the chemical giant's many
business units also have their own staffers for their own Web sites,
although they often draw on the talents of "information design
specialists" in the corporate office as they plan their sites.
DuPont handles product queries received on Web sites by routing
them to its customer service center, which already was in existence to
handle product inquiries coming in via snail mail or telephone.
(InfoNow, 303/368-4646; H-P, 415/857-5654; DuPont, 302/774-8691)