Examination of Associations’ Web Sites in Terms of Corporate Identity: Case of Mardin

The evolving technology brought important developments in communication. Especially, with the spread of the internet and mobile device usage, it is seen that web sites become effective tool in corporate communication. Web sites are not only used by commercial organizations, but also non-profit organizations effectively. Besides providing information about the institution and the activities carried out, corporate web sites provide interaction and communication with the target audience timelessly and in an interactive manner. Professionally prepared websites play an important role for institutions for being preferred by the target audience and therefore provide advantage among their rivals. Associations are established for the purpose of achieving different goals and are called as non-profit organizations and they operate on voluntary basis in communicating with their target groups. Institutional web sites have an important role for associations in order to communicate and interact with their target groups, and provide information about both for themselves and their activities. In this study, the corporate web pages of local associations established in Mardin center (Artuklu) were examined based on the criteria of main page design elements, visual identity indicators, corporate communication activities, corporate philosophical elements and institutional structure elements. Content analysis method has been used in the review of 15 web sites which are the subject of the research. The research results show that, in particular, homepage visual items are prepared in accordance with ideal design rules by all associations, with one exception. However, several problems are observed such as: the web sites of the surveyed associations have deficiencies in terms of their visual corporate identity indicators, the corporate communication activities and tools generally do not take place in the web site adequately and they do not reflect the corporate philosophies and institutional elements adequently. At the end of the study, by emphasizing the elimination of deficiencies, suggestions were made to the associations for more effective communication with the target groups.