Spellr.us, a web-based application that reviews websites and reports back on spelling mistakes, has detected numerous errors on the websites of some of the largest corporations in the United States.
Microsft.com, for example, uses the word “seperated.” Dow.com is proud and “commited” to supporting charity organizations. Cardinal Health, a company worth 97.3 billion dollars, invites customers to choose a product “catagory” on one of the website’s main pages.
In a twist of irony, 23% of the companies surveyed misspelled the world “success,” and 25% of companies spelled “administrative” incorrectly.
“It is very important that organisations don't introduce credibility issues by having problems with their content,” says Kevin Garber, Founder & CEO of spellr.us. “High quality brands in particular have an expectation projected onto them of consistency and perfection.”
According to a web credibility study published by Stanford University, typographical errors have roughly the same negative impact on a website's credibility as a company's legal or financial troubles.
But spell-checking websites isn’t as easy as you’d think. “With larger companies in particular, their sites tend to be very large and have many content contributors. These factors can make the sites particularly susceptible to spelling errors and typos,” says Garber.
Scanning websites using spellr.us—a Sydney based company—provides the user with easy to understand reports and screenshots of errors found. Suggestions of correct words are also provided.
2 Mistakes a Day, a blog that tracks spelling errors on corporate websites, has recently been targeting Forbes 500 websites. Using the spellr.us tool, the blog has disclosed spelling errors on the websites of FedEx, Sunoco and Verizon. It can be found at http://2xmad.spellr.us/
All of the companies with detected errors have been contacted, with no responses thus far.
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