Cisco.com boasts breadth and depth, but search and navigation need a facelift.

IN A NUTSHELL

The Executive Thought Leadership (ETL) section of Cisco.com has substantial breadth and depth. It highlights its management team by providing executive perspectives, videos, and bios, and it defines a clear voice for its thought leadership content.

BRAVO

Cisco's site features professionally produced content, and the company has an abundance of in-depth white papers. ETL also contains interactive tools like rate this page and polls, and the site's webcasts are well produced. Personalizing Cisco's leadership appears to be a key objective, and it's executed well.

TRY AGAIN

Cisco does not have a central, searchable repository for content, and its interactive content is limited, with only one blog (to date) and no chats. Navigation is also an issue. Many of the links in the left-hand navigation take the user to search result pages, which aren't very inviting. And while it's consistent in ETL, the navigation on Cisco.com is confusing, sometimes taking the user to a completely different place on the site with a new set of navigational choices.