Air Liquide: Giving equal treatment

A navigational structure gives equal prominence to marketing and corporate information.

The Site

Air Liquide, the France-based world leader in industrial and medical gases, divides its website into two main sections: Corporate Information and Business Solutions. The clear choice offered on the home page is sustained throughout the site by a tabbed menu box in the main left-hand navigation.

Visitors who have chosen to go into Corporate Information will see the corresponding tab highlighted, with its main sub-sections set out beneath. The Business Solutions tab alongside it is rendered in a lighter shade of the highlight colour (blue); clicking on it switches the view to the Business Solutions sub-section menu without changing content in the body of the page. The converse configuration applies when Business Solutions is the starting point.

The Takeaway

The web is a strong vehicle both for marketing and for putting out information about a company or organisation, but the two uses seldom sit comfortably together on the same site. Usually they are seen as serving separate audiences, with one or the other tending to dominate according to strategic priorities (or who has control of the website, communications or marketing/sales).

Air Liquide has given much thought to ways in which the site can give equal prominence to marketing and corporate information. Its solution is unusual and neat, allowing visitors to switch effortlessly between a marketing-based menu and a corporate one. The home page is careful to serve both audiences.

First published on 11 April, 2006