Firmdale Hotels is a leader in its industry for digital governance, according to the latest Sitemorse INDEX report

01 Feb 2018

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Firmdale Hotels has been identified as a leader in digital governance, coming in first place in its industry in the latest Sitemorse INDEX quarterly report.

The Sitemorse INDEX comprehensively ranks sites based on the experience that they deliver, with the aim of driving accountability across organisations. Sites are scored based on optimisation, experience and compliance, looking at factors such as loading speed, code quality and accessibility.

Firmdale Hotels received a score of 6.9 out of 10, representing a good standard of optimisation for user experience and content delivery. It also topped the list for functionality and was close to the top in performance.

Other high ranking hotel brands included Hilton Grand Vacations and Hyatt Residence Club, in second and third place, respectively. Meanwhile, Hyatt Centric was the highest climber in the hotel industry, increasing its score from 2.7 to 4.0 and jumping 52 places on the list.

Among the issues discovered on low performing sites were faulty email addresses, broken links, missing images and webpages that lacked titles and descriptions. Many companies are unaware of the issues that are discovered and many more struggle with the substantial challenge of manually monitoring and implementing repairs. Companies that score highly, however, tend to have strong leadership and a firm understanding of corporate responsibility.

Lawrence Shaw, CEO of Sitemorse, said, “When it comes to digital media, consumers today have very high expectations. This means that a single mistake – whether in inconsistent branding, poor accessibility or spelling errors – can be extremely costly. Within the hotel industry, there’s a huge range in the quality of delivery and, while some companies are doing a great job, there’s a lot of room for improvement. That said, issues often arise where sites are delivered or managed by third parties. Ultimately, the only way to be sure of quality is to have the ability to monitor and review sites on hand internally.”

The results of the INDEX were based on a total of over 115m tests on public pages carried out in January 2018. Every page on every site surveyed was subjected to over 1,600 unique tests, checks and measures each.

Other sectors surveyed include local government, higher education, police forces, US airlines and consumer finance.

The Sitemorse INDEX report is carried out by Sitemorse, which helps clients to continuously and automatically monitor for issues relating to optimisation, experience and compliance (including SEO and accessibility) on public and private pages. The findings of the latest report, for Q1 2018, will be released over the course of February and March 2018 but the full results for the hotel industry are available in advance and can be found here.

 

About the Sitemorse INDEX

Since 2002, the Sitemorse INDEX has provided an independent industry standard for benchmarking digital governance. Sites are reviewed and scored based on some 1,600 tests, checks and measures per page, identifying actions that improve optimisation, experience and compliance. Since its inception, it has been the fundamental measure of digital capability for organisations that strive for online excellence.

Scoring highly typically reflects those that have strong digital leadership and understand the importance of providing the best visitor experience possible – and it reflects positively on the entire organisation’s operations and branding.

The latest results follow over 115m tests on public pages carried out in January 2018. These results provide extensive insights into the experience that these sites deliver and offer vital information on how they can better meet audience expectations – points that are crucial, but impractical to capture manually. Indeed, organisations are all too often unaware of what might be simple actions that they could take that would offer immediate improvements to their delivery.

 

About Sitemorse

Sitemorse first introduced Digital Governance automation in 2001. Still privately owned, the company pioneered the field and continues to provide clients with new tools and capabilities every year. Our new Digital Experience Manager brings data science to governance analytics, advancing capabilities for the full content management cycle; simplifying the monitoring of quality, content consistency and compliance from within Content Management Systems; and providing continual monitoring thereafter.

We help digital managers to build strong processes and accountability, to minimise risks and to achieve the highest standards of content quality, with hierarchical reporting keeping an eye on corporate responsibility. With Sitemorse, there is no need for the substantial infrastructure, support and accordant costs that are required for manual quality and compliance checks. Ultimately, Sitemorse delivers confidence and drives efficiency to optimise branding online.

For more information, please visit: www.sitemorse.com

 

Contact

Sitemorse, 48 Charlotte Street, London W1T 2NS

Telephone: +44 (0)77 2940 5889

 

PR enquiries:

Michael Simon: msimon@sitemorse.com