Survey Reveals What’s Important When Building Websites

Coming into the office, gathering for meetings, visiting business partners …. these established ways of working have changed dramatically with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Along with the normalization of online meetings, many companies are now working to review and strengthen their corporate websites – a key medium responsible for communication with various stakeholders, such as business partners, shareholders, and job applicants.

So, what do webmasters in Japan consider important when building a corporate website?

The following chart plots the results of a survey, asked to webmasters in Japan, on the most important facets for consideration when developing a website (with multiple answers possible). The 2020 results are placed alongside those from a similar survey undertaken in 2012 (from research by the Information-technology Promotion Agency, Japan (IPA)) .

In the 2020 survey, ‘cost (66.4%)’, ‘operation convenience/scalability (65.1%)’, and ‘security (41.2%)’ were deemed to be the three most important facets.

A noteworthy change in the latest survey is that while the importance of 'cost' has decreased by 6.9 percentage points, among responders there’s now enhanced emphasis on the importance of 'security' – which has seen an increase of 12.6 percentage points. The threat of security incidents, including cyber-attacks targeting corporate websites, is believed to have contributed to this increased awareness of website security.

Additionally, ‘operation convenience/scalability’ increased by 1.7 percentage points over the previous survey. This highlights the need for in-house website management, such as the introduction of a CMS (Content Management System).

Although the IPA survey was conducted with the managers of smaller websites, 'economy, convenience, and security' are facets that any corporate site manager will be aware of, even if priorities vary from company to company.

However, as readers may be aware, there are trade-offs between 'economy, convenience and security'. It is not easy to ensure both convenience and security while pursuing economic efficiency. Therefore, it’s necessary to find an optimum balance between the competing objectives.

For companies to better manage and balance such conflicts when developing a corporate website, a shortcut is to consider, through operation, how to best "resolve business issues and needs."

Depending on the industry and sector, both the management and operational structures, and the scope of work covered by the responsible operational department, etc. corporate websites face a multitude of challenges. For example, business issues and needs differ greatly depending on whether the site is designed for B2B or B2C purposes, whether it’s managed by a single webmaster or has an organizational structure involving over 100 people, whether the main objectives are PR-focused, IR-focused, etc. and whether elements of digital marketing and DX are to be included.

Different challenges require different IT needs to help solve them, i.e., through different functionality and security measures for CMS, and varying notions of what constitutes cost-effectiveness. The key to resolving the trade-off is, as the old saying goes, choosing “the right tool for the job”.

For a long time now, the introduction of a CMS has been popular choice when developing a corporate website. Unfortunately, however, there are many cases where CMS selection results in failure - this is usually due to an absence of 'issue' resolution.

It’s said that there are more than 1,300 different CMS products - each with different applications and license structures. Even with those limited to only corporate website application, there are a variety of options depending on the business needs. Furthermore, depending on the CMS chosen, security measures and ease of maintenance and upkeep will vary - this will have a significant impact on "total costs" - both initial costs at the time of development and running costs.

So, the key to selecting the optimum CMS for your company - one that balances economy, convenience, and security - is how well the product meets business needs.

A series of webinars will be held on the theme of 'CMS' and the Enterprise Web.

A different CMS will be featured at each event. From the use of evolving CMS for DX promotion to standard themes such as strengthening information dissemination, we will provide information on the current state of the CMS market to meet the diverse needs of the corporate web.

By providing information on "what CMS can currently do", " how to improve operational efficiency with CMS", and "how to strengthen relationships with customers in non-face-to-face settings", etc., the events are designed to support webmasters in taking their first steps toward issue resolution.

We await your participation. Please note that seminars are in Japanese-language.