"How do the top commercial services firm's websites compare?," asked a recent study performed by eValid partner BlueRiverStone (BRS) a website experience analysis firm headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa. BluRiverStone's motto is Defining the Online Experience.

BlueRiverStone conducted the The Financial Mail (FM)'s 3rd Annual Online Responsiveness Index "Web Winners and Loser", published in the FM's 26 February 2003 issue. The analysis investigated a total of some 110 securities and companies, asking a number of questions:

1. Web Usability Evaluation -- a semi-form manual assessment of each website's delivery of investor relations information.

2. Subjective Style, Look and Feel, and Information Applicability -- a set of comparative scorings based on BlueRiverStone's experience. These judgements assessed the ease of navigation to obtain important information, how "professional" the investor relations section appears, and an assessment of the applicability of information presented to an investor/customer.

3. WebSite Analysis With eValid -- Detailed evaluation of features such as site size, depth, response time, relative age, number of broken links, and page complexity.

The index values from the manual analyses (1) and (2) were plotted against the analytic results from (3) to provide a comprehensive comparative view of how well various firms' websites scored relative to one another. Read the Summary Report. Here is the Complete Report (PDF).

Additional information about the study can be obtained from Ian Kruger ian@blueriverstone.co.za