Aberdeen Group: Ticking the wrong box

A display of clients is too eye-catching for its own good.

The Site

Aberdeen Group, a US-based business and technology researcher, integrates a ticker display to show off its client base.

Aberdeen Group’s page template includes two layers of main navigation links at the top. These cover primary sections (Research, Services, About Us) and data resources (Full Research Library, Research Studies, Market Alerts, Perspectives & Strategies). The latter are part of a tinted bar which has an Our Clients ticker running along the bottom.

Names of client companies run in alphabetical order across the ticker from right to left, fading into and out of view at either end so that only a single name is fully legible in the centre of the display at any one time. Clicking on a name opens a client directory index page. Only on the home page is the ticker absent.

The Takeaway

Aberdeen Group’s desire to show off its extensive list of clients is understandable but, however impressive the portfolio might be, the insistence on making it literally eye-catching is surely more likely to irritate than seduce site visitors It seems particularly inappropriate given that a large proportion of visitors are presumably intent on looking for or at research data and allied content; for them, a client catwalk is going to be more of a distraction than a ‘come on’.

A case can be made for tickers on a news site but here both the device and its construction are ultimately misguided; any marketing value is diminished rather than enhanced as a result of the feature’s persistent intrusiveness. If Aberdeen wants to show off the technology (by way of brand enhancement?), better to place the ticker at the foot of pages. If parading clients is the objective, a static ‘teaser’ selectively and not universally deployed would make more appeal.

First published on 17 June, 2008