We came. We saw. We Spoke.

Quick hit: If there’s any correlation between the capitalization of a company and its online brand presence, it boils down to: “We can afford to look ugly.” At least that’s the conclusion we drew during a study of websites of the Fortune 100 we conducted while stimulating thought for a new project. The web is awash with sites that showcase design in order to inspire pro and amateur alike, but they never display the inspirational work of/for large multi-nationals, because, well... there isn’t any.

Sorta.

Kudos to those Fortune 100 companies who dare to be different (noted by an asterisk in the list below) and push the rest of us to think harder about what a website should be.

1. Wal-Mart
2. Exxon Mobile
3. Chevron
4. General Motors
5. ConocoPhillips
6. General Electric*
7. Ford*
8. Citigroup
9. Bank of America
10. AT&T
11. Berkshire Hathaway
12. JP Morgan Chase
13. AIG
14. Hewlett-Packard
15. IBM
16. Valero Energy
17. Verizon
18. McKesson
19. Cardinal Health
20. Goldman Sachs*
21. Morgan Stanley
22. Home Depot*
23. Procter & Gamble
24. CVS Caremark
25. United Health Group
26. Kroger
27. Boeing
28. AmerisourceBergen
29. Costco
30. Merrill Lynch
31. Target
32. State Farm*
33. WellPoint
34. Dell
35. Johnson & Johnson
36. Marathon Oil
37. Lehman Brothers &mdash Bankrupt, 2008
38. Wachovia
39. United Technologies
40. Walgreens
41. Wells Fargo
42. Dow Chemical
43. MetLife
44. Microsoft
45. Sears Holdings
46. UPS
47. Pfizer*
48. Lowe’s*
49. Time Warner
50. Caterpillar
51. Medco Health Solutions
52. ADM
53. Fannie Mae
54. Freddie Mac
55. Safeway
56. Sunoco
57. Lockheed Martin
58. Sprint*
59. PepsiCo
60. Intel
61. Altria Group
62. Supervalu
63. Kraft Foods*
64. Allstate
65. Motorola
66. Best Buy
67. Walt Disney*
68. FedEx
69. Ingram Micro
70. Sysco
71. Cisco Systems
72. Johnson Controls*
73. Honeywell International
74. Prudential Financial*
75. American Express
76. Northrop Grumman
77. Hess
78. GMAC
79. Comcast
80. Alcoa
81. DuPont
82. New York Life Insurance
83. Coca Cola
84. News Corporation
85. Aetna
86. TIAA-CREF
87. General Dynamics
88. Tyson Foods
89. HCA
90. Enterprise GP Holdings
91. Macy’s
92. Delphi
93. Travelers
94. Liberty Mutual
95. Hartford Financial Services
96. Abbott Labs
97. Washington Mutual
98. Humana
99. Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance
100. 3M

Notice anything missing? We made this list in late 2008. It takes time to rework a list of this length in HTML, and we only dust it off on rare occasions. Someday we’ll get around to doing that, but until then, please note that Apple (by far our favorite Fortune 100 site) is now #56 on the 2010 Fortune 100 list after only reappearing the prior year.

So, what do you think? Why are the websites of so many of these companies so embarrassingly bad? *ahem* General Dynamics.

by W. Gene Powell