Vodafone Group: Getting with it

A major visual makeover tries for a contemporary feel.

The Site

Vodafone, the UK-based mobile phone group, has given its corporate website a major visual makeover. All the content is now laid out in irregular disconnected cut-out panels overlaid on a photographic image of an amusement park ‘big dipper’ track set against a blue sky.

Primary and secondary navigation links are carried in a stack to the left, with the length of each line trimmed to the length of the heading (About Vodafone, Investor Relations etc.) so that the shape of the panel has a ragged rather than justified right-hand edge. The utility bar and search box are pasted as strips across the top of the screen above the main content panel, which has a regular rectangular shape except for the tab-style attachment of the company logo at top left. However, the panel itself can sit above one or more subsidiary content or menu blocks.

As yet, the country sites have not switched to the new look.

The Takeaway

A few years back the careers areas of company sites could be relied on to try dressing up in a more ‘youthful’ appearance, ranging from the online equivalent of a brightly patterned tie to full-on ‘dress down Friday’ mode. Vodafone appears to have decided its whole corporate site needed to ‘get with it’ style wise, the ‘it’ in this case being the ‘homemade’ scrapbook look of teenager/student dominated social networking sites.

For shock value the new-look Vodafone group site stands out in the corporate webscape like a surfer dude in the boardroom, but the careful preservation of a conventional navigational framework means usability is scarcely impaired once you’ve adjusted to the new décor. Vodafone is obviously gambling that that will not be a problem as the popularity of social networking sites spreads to all generations and the ‘establishment’, led by campaigning politicians and brand marketers, gets involved. That may be, but a gamble it remains. It’s still a corporate site and if users decide it’s doing the equivalent of parents gatecrashing a rave –or, indeed, getting their own MySpace page – then it will be viewed as embarrassingly uncool by young and old alike. And bear in mind most corporate careers sites have toned down or hung up their fancy wardrobes.

First published on 19 June, 2007