Insurance group Aviva has seen its corporate website named the best at covering the full spectrum of stakeholder needs.

The accolade comes from the Investis Quarterly Corporate Website Ranking, a tool with which publicly listed companies can measure the performance of their corporate website against both those of their peers and best practice.

The IQ ranking system identifies 188 best practice criteria, including content, functionality and usability. As well as providing an overall score, a site’s effectiveness is also measured by its ability to meet the content needs of different stakeholder groups such as journalists, investors, and potential employees.

Aviva scored highly across all criteria and won a 74% rating for its customisable website option and the fact that it can be optimised for Blackberry users. Royal Dutch Shell was second on 72%, ahead of Anglo-American, Sainsbury’s and British American Tobacco, all on 71%.

Food retail is as the best performing sector, with Tesco and Sainsbury’s in particular ensuring that corporate web sites no longer play second fiddle to consumer sites. Banking also scored highly although the report was critical of banks’ “universally poor” online communications during the financial crisis. Mining was the weakest sector.

“There are some great corporate websites out there but there are still too many into which no effort seems to be put,” said Investis director, Al Loehnis. “But the website is the only communications platform that’s required to address all stakeholders with the same voice. So it’s got to be consistent and it’s got to be current.

“A company’s web site is viewed as an expression of its corporate values,” he added. “A floppy site equals a floppy company.”