PALO ALTO, Calif.--June 7, 2004-- HP today announced major enhancements to the content, design and functionality of HP.com, the company's public Web site, and its private, customized site for business customers called HP.com Business to Business. The improved sites offer a better experience to visitors who are learning about, choosing, buying or need support for their HP products and solutions. Through intensive customer research and feedback, HP identified and implemented the suggestions that most significantly improved upon the customer experience. Major enhancements include: -- more robust, relevant content; -- improved design and navigation; -- streamlined purchasing processes; and -- enhanced global availability. The new features on the sites support customers' flexible interaction with HP, while at the same time offering them a consistent experience throughout. The enhanced sites reflect HP's ability to implement change quickly and easily, across a broad range of products, illustrating HP's success as an Adaptive Enterprise that can effectively manage change. "We strive to make it as easy as possible for customers to do business with HP," said Olivier Kohler, senior vice president, Worldwide eBusiness, Customer and Sales Operations, HP. "By enhancing HP.com and HP.com Business to Business, we have improved and simplified the user experience -- and our ability to keep pace with the ever-changing needs of customers." "Among IT vendors, HP is separating itself from the pack with the accelerated rate at which the company responds to customer feedback and delivers enhancements to improve the ease and efficiency of customer interaction with HP," said Marty Gruhn, program director and general manager, siteIQ Website Best Practices Group. "HP customers around the globe will benefit from the company's adaptiveness and commitment to providing a holistic, consistent customer experience." Richer, more relevant content Designed with the customer experience in mind, the revamped HP.com Business to Business site makes it easier for large businesses to find relevant information about HP products, services and technology platforms. New site features for users include: a robust, searchable enterprise library containing more than 4,000 white papers, case studies and more; information about how HP solutions can help businesses meet critical IT needs; and pages about the HP Adaptive Enterprise strategy. With HP.com Business to Business, users will find new product and solutions content personalized to fit their profiles and interests; enterprise solutions content; recent drivers; and HP news. The site also offers content specifically developed for the Web sites of individual accounts, as well as enhanced account document and message posting capabilities for greater collaboration between customers and their HP account teams. Site design enhancements Bolstering its award-winning design, HP.com now includes a significantly enhanced search tool to make it easier for customers to locate product information from HP's IT portfolio. Now, whenever a customer's search query contains a specific product model number or stock keeping unit (SKU), HP.com provides "product quick links" to both technical support for the product of interest as well as corresponding purchasing pages and product photos. The design of HP.com Business to Business has been enhanced based on the HP.com public site, providing a more consistent customer experience across the sites. In addition to the increased visual impact, business-to-business customers will now find the site easier to use with faster access to tools and information they need most. Through their personal profile, each user can tailor the site to meet their needs with quick links to activities and content, such as pricing and service-level agreement information, user-specific drivers and order status, roadmaps, order history reporting and purchasing workflow tools. By putting more control in the user's hands, HP allows customers to manage their business with HP even more efficiently. In addition, the purchasing experience within the site has been enhanced to provide additional offers and more product images and descriptions to help customers make more informed purchasing decisions. Streamlined purchasing processes To assist enterprise customers with identifying and evaluating HP products, services and technology platforms, the revamped HP.com Business to Business site enables customers in the United States to engage with HP sales professionals in real time. Using an enhanced online chat tool, customers have the opportunity to ask for additional information and advice about which solutions will best address their business needs. The user experience at HP.com Business to Business also has been simplified with the introduction of more intuitive navigation that helps guide the user through the purchasing process, eliminating steps where possible. The ability to quickly purchase from any page within the site greatly improves the efficiency for frequent purchasers. Enhanced global availability The new features on HP's public and private sites are available globally. With more than 4.5 million unique visitors a week, HP.com consists of 69 country sites in 35 languages. HP.com Business to Business serves enterprises around the world. The enhanced site includes increased localization capabilities, with which a user can purchase from multiple catalogs in multiple languages and currencies from a single site by changing their view on the fly for greater efficiency.