Choice Corporate Sites

by Wayne Cunningham

These days, a presence on the World Wide Web is de rigeur for any business. I'm sure many corporate leaders are scratching their heads and wondering why they need a Web site, but since their competitors have one, they don't want to get left behind. Besides, it doesn't cost that much. Well, the suits who decided to ignore the return-on-investment figures and put some real effort into creating a fun and informative site will at least garner praise among Web surfers. Here are The Net's 10 best corporate sites.

Joe Boxer
http://www.joeboxer.com

Designed with a real sense of whimsy, Joe Boxer has pages and pages of fun and games. Warning: Wear clean underwear!

Voyager Company
http://www.voyagerco.com

The home page for Voyager Company, a CD-ROM manufacturer and distributor, always takes advantages of the new tricks and trials of HTML. With inventive, appealing graphics, hip fonts, and daring layouts, the site is a bit more chaotic than most other corproate sites, but it also has a hip and edgy feel. What's particularly wonderful is that Voyager offers value-added, Web-only content; it's not just selling CD-ROMs.

Stoli Central
http://www.stoli.com/

Stoli's freedom of vodka slogan and constructivist graphics reference the Russian Revolution, and how perfectly 90s for this to be subverted to a capitalist cause.

Warner Brothers
http://www.warnerbros.com/

Entertainment companies have an advantage in the Web market because they understand the necessity of promotion. Warner is a big umbrella that includes music, television, and film areas.

Sony Online
http://www.sony.com

With a relatively long history in the Web site arena, Sony has been pioneering and learning what works in this new medium. Much to do here from all of Sony's divisions.

AT&T
http://www.att.com

Another veteran Web site, AT&T content ranges from the extremely technical to fun, infotainment activities to gee-whiz here's-what-the-future-will-bring stuff.

Adobe Systems
http://www.adobe.com

Free software is always good for points, but Adobe's striking graphics and tightly organized home page shows some intelligent, eloquent design.

I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!
http://www.tasteyoulove.com/
Although a little more product-oriented than most corporate sites, we just couldn't help ourselves with this combination of fake butter and Fabio.

Disney
http://www.disney.com

Disney only launched its rich, 2,500-page-deep official site in February, and must have used the time up until then to look at what other successful sites had done. There's plenty of fun Disney story stuff for kids, plus Disney vacation planning help.

Bank of America
http://www.BankAmerica.com/

Although staid, there is a real personal feel from the home page. Plenty of banking information plus tax tips, personal finance, and pages about community projects.

And please check out:
American Recordings (http://american.recordings.com)
Bergman-Ungar Associates(http://www.sdw.com/m/BUA/)
Crayola (http://www.crayola.com:80/home.html)
Cyborganic Gardens (http://www.cyborganic.com/)
Digital Planet (http://www.digiplanet.com)
Dimension X (http://www.dimensionx.com)
Duracell (http://www.duracell.com/)
Eye Q Music (http://www.eye-q.com/)
internetMCI (http://www.internetmci.com)
Levi's (http://www.levi.com/)
MCI (http://www.mci.com)
Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com/)
Microsoft Network (http://www.msn.com/)
Sitespecific (http://www.sitespecific.com/)