Turning Your Website Outside-In

Using your website to “turn your company inside out” is quite common. This was a message at the heart of the Cluetrain Manifesto & it’s one of the foundations of corporate blogging: Allow the individuals that make up your company to broadcast themselves externally & you benefit them individually & benefit the organisation as a whole.

Something that is less common is the opposite: Pointing your website intelligently at your internal employees. That is usually the realm of “The Intranet”. Employee needs usually fall into one of two or three categories in the ‘external-facing’ website design process:

1. Outputs: Which departments do we need to represent on the website? What content can we get from them to show off to the outside world?
2. End Points: Where do our leads need to route to? Who’s responsible for website complaints about X, Y & Z?
3. Afterthoughts: You just rolled out a change to the website & now your sales team is complaining because they can’t do something they used to be able to.

Over the next few posts I’ll put together a few ideas for other ways your “external” website can benefit your “internal employees”:

1. Use Your Website To Educate Your Sales Team
2. Use Geo-Location To Help Your Credit Control Team Prevent Fraud

Technorati Tags: web strategy, intranet