Marketing & Communications
The difference between Internet and Intranet
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Filed under Marketing & Communications
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Your website is accessible by the public. Use it to communicate with that audience. Don’t use it to communicate with your own staff; that’s what an Intranet site is for.
This is a screenshot of the Home page of a Prince Edward Island-based seafood vendor. Not very exciting, I know, but that’s another story.
What I want to point out is the fact that they thought it wise to add a link on their customer-facing site that was intended to be accessed only by their own staff. Not only that, but the content of the linked page pertained to a rather juicy controversy that was brewing within the company. A screenshot of that content is also included below.
I paid them the courtesy of blurring out the names of the people involved, though I’m not sure why I bothered, since they made all this available on their own website for weeks. Incidentally, I learned of this through Twitter, so this company has already been publicly mocked for this mistake.
Your public website is not intended to be a communication tool for internal stakeholders. If you need such a thing, hire someone to build an Intranet for you. And if the subject matter you wish to discuss involves accusations of embezzlement, maybe it’s best to have an old-fashioned staff meeting?
