Accenture - Update your Website
Today’s website that is up for evaluation is that of Accenture. Accenture are one of the largest consultancies in the world and have operations all around the world. Their logo is respected as being one of the best modern corporate identities and by in large they have quite a positive media profile. However, for all their prowess Accenture have dropped the ball on their homepage.
In comparison to most corporate websites, Accenture’s homepage is concise and short. Now while this may appear positive, it is not. Their is no point being short if means you lose context. In the case of the Accenture website, this short homepage is a very poor road map of the corporate website. In some ways it is more reminiscent of a late 90’s splash screen than the shop front of one a large consultancy.
Navigation on this website, is a dog’s breakfast of poor accessibility. The upper left hand side of the screen is screaming for some text links, but text is relegated to a few sundry items at the bottom of the screen. What we have instead is Flash, and lots of it. The primary navigation is not only Flash but DHTML-style dropdown Flash menus. Have these people not heard of accessibility? Frankly I am appalled that a company with no shortage of resources should choose to create a website that shuns the visually impaired. It is not good enough. You might forgive Accenture if they couldn’t afford or if it was beautifully done, but it is neither. Change it!
Give the lack of quality navigation the search box is given quite an amount of prominence, being displayed in isolation at the top of the screen. I reckon it gets used a lot.
This page doesn’t really have much to redeem it. The site is based around an uninspiring and quite poor picture of Tiger Woods. In the way they use Tiger we are meant to presume that Accenture associate them with excellence on a par of Mr. Wood’s golf talent. But why use that image? Why use an image of Tiger seemingly swallowing a wasp rather than with him powerfully striking the ball into the distance. Such an image would convey an ability to deliver on ones’ goals and that of an agile, successful enterprise. instead we get the mental picture of some old guys sitting around, not able to see what the objective is and looking thoroughly miserable.
If I were a prospective client and I wanted a web project to be delivered I would not have any faith in Accenture based on this embarrassing performance.
Accenture you say you know what it takes to be a tiger, how about you actually deliver like Tiger Woods and create the best website you can. Otherwise you might be like the other tiger - on the verge of extinction.
Posted 26.11.07