H&H Webranking for Dutch companies

Monday, March 01, 2010

TNT continues to hold off their competitors and wins the Dutch rankings for the fourth consecutive year. Second place goes to the chemical giant DSM, closely followed by Heineken, who take a huge step forward from last year’s 8th position. Despite harder demands from the capital market and a more thorough research protocol Dutch companies bypasses many of their European competitors, turning it at no 3 in Europe.

“TNT has always been a top contender in the survey and wins the 2009 Dutch ranking and claims the 5th position on the larger Europe top 500 list. TNT is truly one of the best companies in Europe in combining technical functions such as their use of films and the possibility to listen to the content with highly requested financial information”, says Marcus Eriksson, Head of the survey at H&H.

Functions

When it comes to online functions, which is highly appreciated by the target group, Dutch companies shows particular strong results. There has for example been an increased use of financial tables, which derives in full from an Internet platform and making financial communication more efficient and transparent. Royal Dutch Shell has for example a lot of tools for analyzing the numbers in their Annual review.

Missing content

Dutch companies’ score the highest average of all countries on the Start Page (C) and the Contacts (I) section. Challenges remain mainly in Financial Information section, an area that has grown in importance this year. Dutch companies are above the European average, but there is still a large gap between what information the capital market demands and what is actually presented on the corporate websites.

Social media

H&H Webranking also evaluates companies’ presence outside of the corporate website. Facebook, Wikipedia, YouTube and Twitter are some examples of channels that are tested in the survey. The strongest contenders in this area are companies from Switzerland and the UK, but the Netherlands perform well, turning at number 4 in Europe. Dutch companies that receive high score in this area are Shell, TNT, Heineken, Unilever and Wolters Kluwer.

More information: H&H Webranking 2009 The Netherlands - Results