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David Bowen has been writing a two-weekly column for FT.com since 1998. He is senior consultant for Bowen Craggs, a website effectiveness consultancy. Its broad aim is to help organisations make their websites as effective as possible by seeing what others are doing right and (more often) wrong. His clients include many of the largest companies in the world, as well as government and international organisations. In 2004 he was named one of the 100 most influential Britons in the internet’s first decade.
David was previously a business writer, working at Euromoney, Business magazine and - for seven years - the Independent and Independent on Sunday. He was industrial editor of the IoS (and was twice Industrial Journalist of the Year), but moved into the post-industrial age through a series of articles and a book on what then - in 1993 - was called multimedia. He set up Net Profit as a publisher and website analyst in 1996, and spun off his own consultancy in 2002. His column appears every other Thursday. - -
When the web sweeps bad news under the carpet
I wondered if amid the financial chaos, organisations in the spotlight have been using the web to tell us what is going on. The answer, in most cases, is no, writes David Bowen.
How to keep jobseekers and analysts happy
A trend in corporate websites is the move away from a focus on investors. But David Bowen has found a company moving in the opposite direction – away from cuddly, towards numbers
Anglican websites avoid the issues too
The web almost has a tendency to reflect reality – whether in business, government or church. But as businesses and governments know, there are ways of spinning reality, writes David Bowen.
The web will struggle to massage a country’s image
Any government thinking it can coral opinion onto its own online turf is living in cloud cuckoo land. The internet is a dangerous place, writes David Bowen.
Which English works on the web?
There is an issue for large organisations that want to transmit a global image, writes David Bowen. Do they use American English, British English, both, a mix, or can they find a “voice” that has no accent?
The way to exploit a medium is to understand it
What’s wrong with “Web 2.0”? It doesn’t mean anything for a start – I won’t delay you with the details, but try reading the opening few paragraphs of its entry in Wikipedia, writes David Bowen.
How has the rural web progressed?
I know farmers use the internet a lot, because I listen to the BBC rural radio soap, The Archers, wherein there is much mention of the web, writes David Bowen.
China’s corporate websites lag behind
While the overall Chinese story will be much happier in 2008, the country’s corporate sites remain a long way from the cutting edge, writes David Bowen.
