Innovation + Responsibility

Well, it's been four days since we launched our fiscal 2007 Corporate Social Responsibility report and the reaction so far has been pretty great. We've gotten dozen of employee emails, a similar number of outsiders requesting print copies of the report (though we only produced a summary print report - 12 pages - to conserve resources. I'm sorry/happy to tell you that we will not be mailing printed copies of this summary report. You can download it from our Web site.  But it really is hard for me to justify mailing single copies of the report anywhere, especially overseas - much as my heart aches for Budapest, I am not mailing a report there (thought it was fun to bust out some Hungarian in my reply email saying so!).

First, the numbers
As of 10am PDT on October 8 there were a total 869 unique visitors to the 2007 CSR report landing page (sun.com/2007csrreport).   If you count all the click-throughs to the other report pages, we had 3,147 hits in total. And we got some detail about where people did (and didn't) go after they landed on the report's introduction page, which is a letter from our CEO, Jonathan Schwartz.  Here is how it is shaking out so far:

Well, those aren't all the numbers - but these are highlights to give you a sense of what people are (and are not) reading.

So what does it all mean?
It's great that as of this morning, nearly 900 people have actually visited the home page of the report - that's a vast improvement on our last report's numbers when only a couple hundred had viewed it in the first week. Of course, 900 is not that much.  Not when you consider we have nearly 34,000 employees at Sun. And then there's all the stakeholders who are supposed to care about our CSR efforts - NGOs, SRIs and the like. And a fair number of that 869 is me and the team checking to make sure everything was working (and of course my mom who had to see what her youngest child was up to).  But in four days we more than tripled our viewing rate over last year's first week. But I am mindful of the significant drop-off from the report home page to the next most-read section, Eco Responsibility.

Nearly 900 people clicked on the home page and less than 25 percent of them continued on into the report! I was encouraged to note that next most read page was Eco Responsibility.  This is an area where Sun is really driving leadership and action, and it is clear that people want to know more.  But not that much more.

I don't know much about Web analytics. I have no idea what the typical conversion rates are from the home page of something to deeper content. But if we are only getting 25 percent of visitors to read past the first page, why exactly do we have so many pages?

One possible explanation for things can be deduced from the following email I got from a Sun employee after the All Sun email went out announcing the report.  She said:

I'm unclear if the report content is the letter from Jonathan and the content behind all the tabs? Or is the report in a pdf format somewhere buried in those pages? When you say "report" I expected one document, but it's fine if the content is behind all the tabs, it just wasn't what I expected.

We are definitely doing things a bit differently and so I am sure there is at least some confusion about where to look. I wonder if it matters what people are expecting. Should they start expecting a different method of reporting? This is something I will be noodling on for at least a few days.

Goals and Indicators
I was pleasantly surprised to see the double digit interest in our GRI reporting and our goals summary. Also, the goals page on our main CSR web site got 47 hits during the month of October - the message I am getting is that people really do want to know how we plan to continue to progress.

What they're saying
We have gotten a fair amount of positive feedback so far.  I won't share it all with you but I will give you the highlights.

Great initiative to publish these annual reports - have printed off the goals summary to pin to my office wall. I look forward to seeing GHG/CO2e measurements in international locations such as here in Sydney. (Sun employee, Australia)
 
I'm proud to be working for a socially responsible company. As an idealistic and privileged American, I have the choice to work for the good guys. Sun is one of these. (Sun employee, US)This is really a great initiative - I am proud to be part of a company with so high level commitment with social responsibility. (Sun employee, Brazil) 

Sun's social and environmental initiatives make all of us proud to be part of this company. As a citizen of a country in development, I am concerned with the trends of global economy as it affects the life of my nation. And I wish the Sun's example be followed by its peers so that we can quickly feel the changes in our daily lives. Thus making the world a better place to live in. Thank you! (Sun employee, Brazil)

Just wanted to offer my congratulations on releasing a CSR report that, based on the quick read I gave it...this AM, looks awesome. (Sun customer, US)

Kudos for a great start at social accountability. I forwarded the CSR report website to many of my friends and they are all rather impressed at the effort we are voluntarily taking. Its not just talk and PR anymore. Interested parties can now track our progress. (Sun employee, US)

I admire your transparency and discussion on this topic...(Sun partner)

Get more readers or publish fewer reports?
Should knowing that large numbers of people are not reading our report impact how we go about reporting? Already we have moved from hard copy to online, in the hopes that doing so made the content more manageable and accessible. Maybe it's time to really assess who is reading these things (not just how many) and use that information to drive what we report, how often we report it and what method we use to share the information.

I wonder what other companies are finding as they measure report readership.