Bluegrass helps Petrofac achieve top Webranking

Bluegrass CEO Nick Durrant

Webranking is the world’s most respected annual survey of corporate websites, with the criteria being determined by an independent global focus group comprising corporate stakeholders, analysts, investors and journalists.

Comprend ranks the websites of the 200 largest companies in the UK to see how well they meet the demands of the capital market and jobseekers. According to the latest survey, improvements have been made in features and functionality since last year but the struggle to provide important IR related content continues.

Bluegrass CEO Nick Durrant is elated that the Petrofac corporate site came top of the Webranking league table this year. "Their score increased significantly from last year, by almost 8 points from 55.6 to 63.4 points (out of 100). The main improvements were made in providing information about the company, to jobseekers and the IR-section."

“Through proactive technical and SEO audits we have helped Petrofac make improvements in various areas such as code optimisation, usability, platform improvements which has helped SEO rankings, speed and general performance,” he explained.

According to the survey, websites are getting faster but fall short when it comes to content. It states that UK companies are getting the basic prerequisites right in providing reasonably fast websites, and the majority are now secure (using https).

However, it says they are still lagging behind when it comes to delivering the kind of information that both the capital markets and job seekers require to make informed decisions about a company.

“We have been delivering successful corporate and IR websites for FTSE companies for over 10 years and we have good experience and a solid understanding of the technical, legal and content requirements for corporate websites,” he added.

He says to maintain high standards, requires constant improvements in functionality and content to stay ahead of one’s competitors and to meet corporate responsibilities.

The report says Petrofac is one of few companies who help the capital market in making correct estimates. It says another area of improvement in the IR section is to present how the company views the near future when it comes to the market and financials.

"It also says the IR information presented on UK websites is actually getting worse in meeting the demands of the stakeholders, with an average fulfilment of 25% this year, compared to 31% last year," he concluded.

Jobseekers want to know what it’s like to work at the company, both active and passive jobseekers of all ages agreed that information on what it is like to work for a potential employer is important. Jobseekers still prefer to find this information on the corporate website (70%), although the popularity of LinkedIn for this purpose has increased to 34% (from 20% last year).

Webranking says UK companies are relatively efficient in providing this information, although it could be improved by adding more information about the work environment and future competence development. It says a little more than half of the UK companies use LinkedIn on a regular basis to communicate with potential jobseekers.

Although the average of all UK companies has gone down since last year, the score of the top 10 performers has increased from 55.8 to 60.3, which is a significant improvement on earlier years. Hopefully the increased score of the top performers will inspire the rest of the companies to improve their websites and better meet their visitors’ needs and demands.