What should a corporate website look like?

In short

A landing page leads one visitor to one action. A corporate website’s job is broader, because it has to answer five different people at once.

Each of them looks for something different. The design’s job is to let each one find their own door at a glance.

The Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g) has tested corporate websites from different angles since 2002. Most of the recommendations below come from its studies on About us, Contact, investor relations and press.

Who comes to a corporate website, and what do they look for?

In his 2009 article on investor relations, Jakob Nielsen names four standard areas of a corporate website: investor relations, PR, job listings and the About us section. I add suppliers. In my view, every company that buys should also have a path for suppliers on its website.

Visitor	What they look for	Where they look
Customer	What you sell, to whom, how to get a quote	Main menu, product and service pages
Job seeker	Open positions, working conditions, how the application works	Careers link, footer
Investor	Financial reports, stock information, a short story of the company	Investor relations, footer
Press	Press contact, releases, images	Press area, contact page
Supplier	Supplier registration, the way to procurement	Contact page, footer

I don’t draw a sitemap without this table. Each row needs a target page and a path to it from the home page. A visitor without a path is ignored by the website.

The home page’s job

The home page’s first job is to say what the company does. The first point in Nielsen’s 2002 home page guidelines is to open the page with a one-sentence tagline that says what the company does. For new or little-known companies this matters even more.

“Shaping the future together” is a slogan, but it tells the visitor nothing. Anyone who reads “We build packaging machines for food factories” knows at once whether they are in the right place.

The second job is to show paths. According to the same guidelines, the home page emphasises the 1 to 4 most important tasks and gives each a clear starting point. I pick these tasks from the visitor table above, for example requesting a quote or browsing jobs.

According to Nielsen, information about the company belongs in a single About us area. This area matters most for recruiting, investor relations and press. For new or little-known companies it also helps build trust.

Menu labels: the visitors’ language instead of internal jargon

The most common problem I see on corporate websites: the menu is named after the internal org chart. “People & Culture” or “Touchpoints” are familiar to everyone inside. To someone outside they become a riddle.

NN/g’s 2024 menu design checklist says it clearly: labels should contain neither internal jargon nor made-up words. In the About us study too, users rarely clicked links with vague names such as “Corporate governance”.

Choose a visitor in the made-up sitemap below. Then switch the menu to jargon labels and see how the same path reads.

The visitor’s path

• Home
  • Click 1Products and services
    • For businesses
    • Click 2Request a quoteGoal
  • About us
    • Who we are
    • Leadership team
    • Press
      • Press releases
      • Press contact
  • Careers
    • Open positions
    • Internships
  • Investor relations
    • Financial reports
    • Stock information
  • Contact
    • Supplier registration
    • Locations

Customer looks for: What you sell, to whom and how to get a quote.

Path: Home › Products and services › Request a quote

Clicks: 2

Does the visitor understand the label? Yes Both labels say what you find. The customer picks the right branch at a glance.

The company, sitemap and labels are made up. The verdict in the notes is my judgement, not a test result. Choose a visitor and the sitemap highlights the path from the home page to the target page. Then switch the menu to jargon labels: the path and number of clicks stay the same; only whether the label is understood changes.

In the demo the number of clicks stays the same in both menus, and I built it that way on purpose. If the visitor doesn’t know which label to click, it means nothing that the page is two clicks away. That is why the three-click rule alone isn’t a good measure.

Don’t decide labels by feel. In her NN/g article, Jen Cardello describes methods such as tree testing and card sorting to find the cause of a findability problem. Which method helps when is in the guide to card sorting and tree testing. Thinking about a website’s sections and labels together is called information architecture.

The menu checklist is clear on two more points. On desktop, the menu shouldn’t be hidden behind a hamburger icon. And links for secondary audiences such as investors and job listings belong in the footer too.

The About us page

On the About us page, visitors decide whether they trust the company. My main source on this is the 2019 study by Anna Kaley and Jakob Nielsen. It ran in three rounds with more than 70 users. 100 websites were tested, 65 more reviewed, and 85 guidelines came out of it.

Users looked for this information: what the company does, where it is based, its mission, its values and its history. Easy-to-find contact options, plain language and real photos of staff and products were on the list too.

The factors that lower satisfaction are clear as well. Confusing menus, empty copy, stock photos and walls of text bothered users. Pages that break on phones and aggressive sales language are on the same list.

The study recommends giving the information in four levels:

1. On the home page, a tagline that says in a few words what the company does.
2. At the top of the About us page, one or two short paragraphs on goals and key achievements.
3. Subpages: mission and values, history, leadership, investor relations, news, careers. Small companies can combine them on one page.
4. Links in the footer. When users didn’t find what they wanted in the main menu, they went straight to the footer.

The study warns of one more thing. Some users short on time didn’t go to About us at all but looked at the search engine’s summary panel. So keep your company details on other websites up to date too.

Contact page and form

The contact page looks small, but every visitor group needs it at some point. Anna Kaley tested this page in 2019 with 20 professionals on 40 corporate websites and wrote 12 guidelines. For me it is the page most easily neglected on corporate websites.

Most users in the study said they would rather talk to a real person on the phone. So the first rule is: don’t hide the phone number. A form only or an address only isn’t enough; you need at least a phone number and an email address.

These stand out among the other guidelines:

• The contact link is in the top menu and in the footer. Users look for it under the name “Contact”, not another name such as “Help center”.
• If there are several numbers, group them in ways people outside understand: customer service, press, investor relations. The internal org chart is no way to organise them.
• Give the full address of the headquarters and the details of each location.
• State each channel’s hours and how quickly you reply. Users expected an answer to emails within 24 hours.
• Live chat is an option, not the only way. It should be clear whether a bot or a person is answering.

The form complements the phone. Kaley recommends limiting the form to 3 to 5 fields, asking only for what is needed to reply and marking required fields. Requiring an account for a simple question puts users off. For field layout and error display, see the form design and inline validation pages.

Careers, investor relations and press

The careers page

Job seekers come with a different question than customers: what is it like to work here? On the careers page I show open positions first and then describe the working conditions. If there are no openings, it is better to say so openly than to show an empty list.

Also write down the steps of the application and how many days it takes. Job seekers want to know whether they will get an answer. For the application form the same rule applies as for the contact form: ask only for what is needed.

Investor relations

Nielsen’s 2009 study had 63 participants: 35 private investors and 28 professional investors. Users completed tasks on 52 corporate websites, and 42 more were reviewed.

The professionals said they don’t trust the corporate website for most financial data and use other data services. Private investors, on the other hand, shied away from piles of data and hardly took time for annual reports.

The recommendation is therefore simple: a short, credible story of the company, a simplified financial overview and the key stock information on one page. A PDF helps for downloading the full report. But presentations prepared only for print aren’t enough; simple online formats are needed too.

Press

In Nielsen’s 2003 test, journalists completed 73% of the tasks in the press areas of corporate websites. In 2001 the figure was 68%. The rate at which they found the press contact had risen from 55% to 82%.

My recommendation: put the press contact both in the press area and on the contact page. The longest path in the demo is also the press path: under About us, 3 clicks. Even with clear labels, a press link in the footer shortens this path.

Trust signals

In the About us study, users were more sceptical than in earlier studies. They noticed jargon as well as stock photos. In the 20 sessions of the last round, the word “reviews” came up more than 40 times.

Users saw testimonials on the website as curated content and compared them with reviews on other platforms. For me this means: what you claim on the website can also be checked outside it.

These elements strengthened trust in the study: realistic images and easy-to-find contact options (phone, address, email, chat). Endorsements from respected external sources were on the list too. Reporting openly on community involvement and sustainability also built trust.

Exaggerated numbers and badges that can’t be checked do harm, in my view. I show honest and manipulative forms of social proof on the social proof page.

Speed and accessibility

Some corporate websites load a large video and sliders on opening. The visitor waits for this load before they can read what the company does. How speed affects users and how to measure it is described in the Core Web Vitals guide.

Accessibility is part of the corporate website too. A menu that can’t be opened with the keyboard or a contact form without labels leaves some visitors standing at the door. Whether the European Accessibility Act applies to your website is covered in the European Accessibility Act guide.

In the About us study, most participants preferred to research companies on desktop and used their phone for quick questions. Even so, pages that break on phones were among the factors that lowered satisfaction. Both screens have to work.

My note

When I look at a corporate website, I first write five tasks for five visitors. Then I do each task, starting on the home page and looking only at the menu labels. I note every label where I get stuck.

In this test I pay particular attention to one thing: is the customer path polished while the other four are forgotten? Job seekers and journalists also leave the website with an impression of the company.

Before a redesign, have someone outside the company read the menu. Ask: “What is behind this link?” If the answer doesn’t match the label, fix the word first. Colour and layout come after.