Review of a Real World SharePoint Site: Candy or Eye Candy

                                                                                         

One of my earlier blogs, “What does SharePoint do?”, has inspired me to start a series on companies that use in house or hosted SharePoint site, and give you real world examples of what is being done with this comprehensive and flexible product.
The site we will visit today belongs to a giant of industry, a manufacturer of delightful candies and chocolate covered temptations. As we proceed through the series, you will see that SharePoint takes on a number of faces, designs and functions, and handles them well.
Chocolate, Anyone?
If you like candy, you are probably already aware of the chocolate/ candy maker known worldwide as Cadbury. What you probably aren’t aware of is the fact that Cadbury uses SharePoint for their global website. Let’s take a look.
First impressions as you bring up the site are that it might be a little busy. The navigation is easy to find, the site is eye catching and has a good color scheme, but at first, you’re not really sure where to look. Unfortunately, this seems to be a trend for corporate sites due to the sheer volume of information they wish to include.
It doesn’t take long to sort out what is what and get to surfing. Cadbury adds dynamic content to their SharePoint site in the form of some flash video to spice up the view, as well as a dynamically updated tracker that displays the company’s share price. They even add some entertainment in the form of randomly displayed “did you know” facts.
Last, I would like to mention that they use the blog feature of SharePoint successfully to host press releases and other information about the company. This is an often used tactic of both large and small companies, because it presents a fast way to post new information and make it available with the least amount of hassle.
All in all, I found the site inviting, informative and easy to navigate. I was able to find things easily from being able to apply for a career to information on investment potential. For a SharePoint site, this one gets 4 out of 5 stars from me.

About the author:
Adrian Gates (Adrian@apps4rent.com) is a Business Manager with Apps4Rent http://www.apps4rent.com/hostedexchange.htm ; which offers premium , hosted Exchange, BlackBerry Enterprise Server Microsoft ActiveSync and Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services.

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