SharePoint For Internet Sites: Branded, Dynamic Web Experiences Made Easy!

Exciting times: only 6 days to go before I can share with you all the great innovation we have supercharged SharePoint 2010 with! Meanwhile, I just wanted to take a few minutes to debunk a myth about branding SharePoint-powered Internet sites. I will do so by sharing my take on what I think engendered this myth and providing countervailing evidence.

The myth

Because SharePoint originally started as an Intranet platform and because branding requirements for Intranet applications are lower than those for Internet applications, some have assumed that the way SharePoint looks on the Intranet is the way it would look on the Internet.  Not so fast! It is not because customers decide not to invest in branding their Intranets that this is in any way reflective of SharePoint’s ability to support branding (changing the SharePoint site look & feel so it matches a corporate brand and complies with related policies). This misconception does not stop here. Indeed, we have occasionally heard in the marketplace that SharePoint is not ready for primetime on the Internet because it is primarily used on the Intranet. This looks like another deductive reasoning fallacy. How a product ends up being used does not necessarily, if ever, encapsulate what it is capable of doing. That one uses one’s sports car essentially or exclusively for commuting does not make it less of a sports car, for example. Similarly, it is not because SharePoint has historically been primarily used for Intranet applications that its 2007 release cannot handle Enterprise-class Internet applications. In fact, SharePoint For Internet Sites powerswebsites for a wide range of companies, from mid-size companies to many of the Fortune 500 and Forbes Global 2000 companies, as well as those of midsize companies. AMD, Conservation International, Ferrari, Continental Airlines, GOL, Hawaiian Airlines, Kroger, StatoilHydro, Viacom, Volvocars, US Marines are just a minute sample of all the customers who have bet on SharePoint to achieve their business goals on the web—whether it’s about attracting larger and new audiences, and/or developing customer loyalty, and/or monetizing products, services, or content. Visit www.wssdemo.com or yet www.topsharepoint.com for real-life screenshots of hundreds of SharePoint For Internet Sites-powered websites.

Embracing the myth challenge

Two of Microsoft’s Most Valued Professionals, Andrew Connell (Critical Path Training, LLC) and Randy Drisgill (SharePoint911), embraced the aforementioned misconception by developing a two-part white paper about the essential concepts needed to create an engaging user interface design. With this white paper, we did not want to force designers to learn any new tool; instead, we wanted to empower designers and magnify what they do best: design! For example, if the designers only swear by Photoshop; no worries, they do not have to use a different design tool because of SharePoint, we got them covered! They can just “Photoshop away” the design comps while following the documented easy steps about converting those into working HTML and CSS.

Don’t take my word for it…get the story from this customer!

Not yet convinced that SharePoint can support your branding needs on the Internet? Then, feel free to go see for yourself by watching the below video interview conducted by my colleague from the SharePoint End User Content Team, Tom Werner, who recently had the pleasure to meet Jared Lasater—a solution developer and partner technology lead at Salient6 with tremendous experience customizing SharePoint sites and ASP web applications for his clients. In this interview, Jared discusses his general approach to branding, some of the challenges encountered on the project, and the overall benefits of branding a SharePoint 2007 site. Specifically, he talks about how he went about branding an Internet-facing SharePoint 2007 site for the Puget Sound SharePoint User Group—a local SharePoint group in the Seattle area. He also explains how to take the site from the default SharePoint look & feel (the BlueBand template) and create a whole new look with new master pages, page layouts, CSS, and a rich set of graphics provided by Robert Chrestensen—a designer and creative director at Salient6. 

I hope you will find this interview insightful.