SharePoint Site Hi- light: We Get You Seen

Thanks for stopping in to check out another installment of “SharePoint Site Hi- light”, a blog series where we examine web sites that are hosted on SharePoint. The main points of our critique are in design and usability, but we also touch on any factors where a company takes advantage of SharePoint’s dynamic nature.

This episode is focused on the web site for the AMA (American Marketing Association), and what they have done with SharePoint. The AMA site is dedicated to providing information, resources, training, education and professional networking to individuals and organizations involved in the marketing industry. Their membership includes groups of leading marketing academics, practitioners and researchers almost 40,000 strong.

We are not here to critique what they are, but their SharePoint site, so let’s get to it.

When navigating to the AMA home page, we find ourselves looking at a nice, neutral color scheme, prominent navigation, and interactive graphical presentation, and organized site exploration links. First impression is nice, the site feels comfortable from the start. Its worth pointing out that they use SharePoint’s poll creation feature to hold a weekly poll and make results available.

After spending a few minutes surfing around, I am even more pleasantly surprised to find that unlike many sites we have visited, they took time to organize the site well, and make all the links visible. No drop- down menus or sub- menus to navigate and pick through. You click on a link at the top of the page, it takes you to that section where you are presented with a comprehensive list of links listed on the left in a secondary navigation bar. Not super innovative, but works better than most.

All in all, I have to say that I am happy to get to review this site. It is attractive, easy to navigate and useful. There are some very minor areas where the site design could be improved, but I would be nit- picking to point them out. Overall, the AMA SharePoint site gets 4.5 out of five stars, a real home run by our standards.

Thanks again for checking us out, and maybe next time we’ll be talking about your SharePoint site! Now we offer Hosted SharePoint 2013 site at value prices. So sign up with us!