by: Michael Sim 10/23/10
Transparency plays a significant factor in building stronger business relationships in today’s economy. Anyone with a company who is accessible by the public or by clients has the potential to increase brand awareness, create loyalty to the brand, build stronger bonds with clients and customers, funnel potential lead traffic, and create a professional workforce that appears ‘more like a family’. This is due to the fact that clients come to recognize and build an aspect of familiarity with the company team. In a way, this helps to remove the suit and tie of typical business procedure; making the overall process of doing business much more efficient.
Take a look at the website Etsy.com/about
From Etsy, we’re given a first-hand look into how business transparency can create a unique experience when learning more about a company. Outside of the ‘family’ effect, it can also have underlying marketing potential. Each profile within the company ‘grid’ is linked to an image or form that tells you more about that person. Instantly, Etsy has now added an amount of pages equal to the amount of people on the page (by my estimate 149). If all pages had indexable content, that would be 149 pages that would serve to increase search engine visibility.
This type of transparency also makes specific employees more accessible and approachable. For example, Etsy has two different types of employee info display; one is a photograph (example), and the other is a dynamic HTML page (example). We can observe this situation, and draw several conclusions. The most successful that I came up with was that they want specific people in their company directory to be accessible, and restrict others to simply putting up general info about themselves. Perhaps this is done with strategic members of the company that help align them better with their marketing objectives.
Now if you are considering replicating what Etsy.com has done, you may not want to display all of your employees on your company website; especially if you have more than 150 employees. That could easily start to get very busy, and would not be very practical for your viewers. Ask for volunteers. It might be better to present the concept to the sales teams and other members of the company who are, or could potentially be in the public eye. This way, your limiting the accessibility to specific members of the company who would serve to increase revenue (sales) or help build and foster relationships with clients and media outlets (PMs, PR, Support).
Other examples of website transparency:
Benefits of Transparency:
- Adds a level of familiarity and personality to the company
- Helps build a relationship between the viewer and employee
- Allows specific members of the company to be more accessible
- Increases page count, relevant content, and links; all SEO benefits
Sources: Etsy.com – WrightLiving.com – Figgy.net – Esrock.com
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