Torque Market Intelligence

Website:
http://www.torquemi.com

Intended Audience:
Organizations desiring to hire a market research company or seeking information on various techniques used to obtain market intelligence.

Usefulness of Content:
The website provides useful information on Torque Market Intelligence and the market intelligence industry, in general. Visitors to the website can find helpful summaries describing Torque’s services, its major clients, its business partners, its recent news events, its requirements for job applicants, its contact information, and a map to its Toronto office. In particular, the “Torque Market Intelligence Toolkit” on its website does a good job of showcasing the firm’s knowledge about its industry, as well as highlighting the particular services it offers.

Consistency of Design:
The design of the website is very consistent. The homepage contains an effective attention-grabbing photograph of a circle containing all white chairs, except for one chair that is orange. The orange chair presumably symbolizes the unique nature of Torque and its services. The website designer does a good job of reminding visitors of this unspoken message by including the lone orange chair on each web page. Orange, white, black, and grey fonts are consistently used on each page to emphasize the same message. The website is also consistent in its use of web pages that require little to no scrolling. This is a great design technique, but at times, it is possible to miss information on some of the web pages that actually require some scrolling (e.g., some may miss the testimonials on the “Experience” tab that appear below the company logos.)

Ease of Navigation:
Overall, the website is very well-organized and easy to navigate. It contains a simple five category menu at the top of each page. The main web page for “Market Intelligence Services” and the “Torque Market Intelligence Toolkit” links to approximately 17 separate pages that contain no more than two paragraphs of descriptive text. This provides a lot of information without cluttering the screen or overwhelming the potential reader. I would offer the following critiques that sometimes hinder navigation and the site overall: Several links in the website open up in new windows, which does not always seem necessary and can result in several windows being open at the same time. Also, the orange and grey text in the website can sometimes be difficult to read, particularly when it appears at the bottom of a page because of the designer’s use of a grey fade in the background. There are also some instances where you expect to find a hyperlink and others places where there are unexpected hyperlinks. The website designer also seems to assume that visitors will know that clicking on the Torque Market Intelligence logo will return them to the homepage. It would probably be better to include a “Home” link for those who are less website-savvy.