The report analyzed the Web sites of the largest 100 companies as defined by Fortune magazine in April. The companies received an average score of 5.7 on a 10-point scale that measured Web site usability in several ways, including how willing the companies are to respond to specific questions, whether a site can be trusted with users' personal data, and general navigation and accessibility.
"This study is a benchmark of how the largest companies treat and respect the online customer, and practices and policies established in this study are often duplicated and copied in smaller enterprises," said Terry Golesworthy, president of The Customer Respect Group.
The highest-rated sites were Intel Corp., Sears, Roebuck & Co., Hewlett-Packard Co., Medco and The Procter & Gamble Co., all of which received excellent ratings. The most improved was Procter & Gamble, which went from 64th place the previous year to fifth place.
"The Fortune 100 sites have tended to be more of an infomercial nature, but this year they've caught up with the data collection that we've seen in other industries, like travel and retail," said Golesworthy. "So a lot more data [is] being collected -- not just the required data but a lot more marketing-type data, including demographics and what customers are interested in, with a lot more marketing back to those customers."
Even so, the amount of data that is being shared outside those organizations has gone down dramatically, Golesworthy said.
"And we see that their privacy policies -- communicating about what they do and what they don't do -- is becoming very clear, either because they want to be nice to customers or because they have hired a privacy officer and the last thing they want to do is have their privacy policies interpreted by the courts," he said.
When it comes to answering e-mails, the Fortune 100 are working to be responsive. "The Fortune 100 take the attitude that 'we have thousands of e-mails coming in and we can't possibly respond to all of them,' " Golesworthy said. "But we've seen improvement in the quality of the e-mail responses."
In terms of usability, Golesworthy said the Fortune 100 sites are improving for the average user, but not for users who have visual or mobility impairments.
For site usability, Intel, Johnson & Johnson and Wells Fargo & Co. were rated highest. This area included tests for the level of support for users with disabilities. The top 100 scored an average of 6.6 out of 10 for usability.
In terms of communication and responsiveness to online inquiries, the best-rated sites were Bank of America, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Sprint Corp. The average score for all top 100 companies was just 4.9.
And in the area of trust, the sites judged to be best were Procter & Gamble, Intel and IBM, with the overall average score for the top 100 at 5.6.