Increased awareness of web usability in the Gulf region

Last year H&H Webranking, for the first time ever, included approximately 30 corporate websites from the Gulf region. As the results were not great then, I’m hoping that NN Groups “Usability week” in Dubai is a sign of increased awareness.

Briefly you can say that H&H Webranking measures how well listed companies meet the demands from international target groups such as business journalists, investors, share holders and job seekers. The companies included are mainly European, along with the Global 100 list and a number of companies in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain.

Big difference between Gulf and European companies

Last year’s results showed that there is a big difference between the Gulf region and Europe, where the Gulf companies have improvements ahead of them. The results of 2010 for the region have not yet been released, but taking a look at the corporate websites I doubt that major changes have been made yet.

What the websites in the Gulf region in general lack is transparency and the use of Internet as a communications channel. Many of the Gulf corporate websites present the companies quite decently, and some of them are also quite good at using videos and interactivity. But there is still a lot of work to be done when it comes to the content.

There is hope for better online corporate communciations!

Therefore it is great news to see that Jakob Nielsen’s NN Group will have their first (as far as I know) “Usability week“ in Dubai in the beginning of next year.

Hopefully, this is a sign of increased awareness when it comes to online communications, which eventually, together with the persistence of H&H Webranking, can lead to better online corporate communications.

Helena