Corporate websites are the sites that represent a corporation, rather than sites that actually DO what the corporation does. For instance, a “XXX Group of Companies” site may be the “umbrella” site for a few companies that actually do things – “XXX Retail”, “XXX Logistics” etc. These are the sites that have the actual client-facing function (in this case selling things and moving them), not the corporate site itself. So the corporate site is there for… what exactly?

This is the key question to crack for a corporate website design project.  Denied an obvious selling angle, what is it actually for? The only people who can really answer this for you are the top-flying executives, who are in my experience by the nature of their business impatient, quick moving, attention-of-a-gnat type folk who really aren’t at all interested in the minutiae of ANYTHING, let alone their website. But then again, the corporate site is the web equivalent of the boardroom, or the corridor of power – so they will certainly have an opinion on it.

Use your meeting with the execs to your advantage
If you are lucky enough to find yourself getting the chance to speak to the top dogs in a company whose corporate site you’ve been asked to build (and with corporate sites, you may well be), you need to cut through the noise. You know the kind of thing: “We want a map page, and lots of headshots, and we need copy for all the divisions and it can’t have that graphic, it’s rubbish. Use a jumbo jet instead!” and so on.

You need to ask the one question that with corporate websites nobody can really answer well, except those at the very top of the company:

“Who is this site for?”

Once they’re considering your utterly reasonable query, you can nudge things on with a qualifier (after all, you probably have an idea):

“Your customers? The government? Investors? Banks?”

NOW you have them. They wanted this site for a reason, after all.  They will (probably with the same machine gun rapidity) tell you straight:

“No no no, it’s not for investors, it’s for banks, local officials in XXX and XXX, we need it to open doors in the US…”

All of a sudden, you can start to get a rough brief together: We are building a site to present company information to financial institutions and local officials, with a focus on our activities in the US.”

With a purpose, the corporate website design brief comes easy
At this stage, you’re back on familiar ground. You’ll be picturing the site map, the structure. Your web design experience will tell you what will and won’t work, and how the elements should be presented. More to the point, the exec will likely sense that you’re on the same wavelength, and instead of them telling you what they think must be on the site, you can suggest to him or her with the authority you’ve just earned WHAT they should be putting on the site to achieve their goals.

Chances are, they’ll be relieved you know what you’re talking about. It’s one thing less for them to worry about. Happily, it’s now also your chance to prove your ability to someone you might not normally even get access to. The site will be far better for having a purpose, and you were canny enough to find it out from the people right at the top when you had the chance.

Phil Morse