Online crisis communications
A horrible bus accident occurred today outside of Uppsala, Sweden’s fourth largest city. Two buses were involved, and lives were lost. A true tragedy - apparently security measures (metal wire lane separators), which had been called for for years, could have had a significant effect on the outcome of this accident.
The two buses that collided were operated for a company by another company, and both companies are therefore highly involved in the crisis communication. I first checked their websites a couple of hours after the incident, and both had updated information. Here are screen shots of the two websites, first the company which the buses are operated for and secondly the operator of the buses.
On the first screenshot, the crisis information consumes the entire main content section. There is clear time stamping of the updates, and there is clear information about who to contact when and where and how.
On the second screenshot, the crisis information is a small section bottom right. There are still images talking about “comfort†and “safety†on the right hand side. If one selects the “Read More†link from “Latest Newsâ€, one is greeted with this page:
Clearly, this would have been much better. There is more information, and in my opinion this would show in a clearer way that they understand the significance of the situation.
Overall, my opinion is that the entire first page of a crisis web should be covered with the constantly updated news flow about the situation. The menus should disappear etc., and you should be able to access the “regular†site easily from this news flow. One might image that many want to cancel their tickets, so access to the regular functions should not be removed, but I see several clear advantages of letting the first page only deal with the crisis. I also think that the information should link to other news sources.
I understand that when dealing with a crisis, a website has next to no significance in comparison with the human tragedies that began this morning. Because of this fact I expect that many companies will now and in the future to a larger extent implement a well thought out plan for dealing with online crisis communication to make it as easy as possible to ensure that time and energy can be spent on other things.
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