Bayer: Marrying mismatch

Code numbers from a printed report help find extra information in its online equivalent.

The Site

Bayer, a Germany-based chemicals company, provides code numbers in a printed report for finding extra information in its online equivalent.

Bayer’s online Sustainable Development Report includes an Additional Info Links panel in its right-hand column. This has a field for entering a reference code from the print version of the report. Code numbers correspond to links in an index of 40 ‘additional info’ topics; typing in a number and clicking the ‘go to’ arrow opens a related page on the Bayer site (not necessarily in the report) or a PDF document. The panel also has a link to the index page (‘Overview’).

Reference codes and their topic are seeded throughout the printed report under a highlighted ‘www’ sub-heading. A PDF version of the printed report available for download from within the online version is not hyperlinked internally.

The Takeaway

Bayer is known for and prides itself on its inventiveness, but its marrying of the two versions of its Sustainable Development Report is of questionable practical value. It only works as an aid for readers of the print version if they either make a note of reference codes for use on their next visit to the website or fire up the site to view in conjunction with their reading of the report. Neither seems the most likely way the printed report would be used.

The reference-code device also seems to have distracted Bayer from optimising the use of the site to serve the online report in its own right. The Additional Info Links index is a useful appendix but surely the links would be more useful if deployed in the manner of conventional related links on the relevant online pages. The PDF version of the print report could also be better integrated with the site by the inclusion of links from the additional info references to online content. And it wouldn’t need one of the company’s rocket-fuel scientists to set it up – the technology is built in to most professional PDF makers.

First published on 01 April, 2008