I just looked at a few web pages in german and realized that most of them use the formal "Sie" and it doesn't look that strange at all. They don't use the direct addressing in most cases too, so I agree that that's the way to go.
Just take care that "Sie" is always written with uppercase first letter (obviously).
Another topic: what about respecting both the female and the male form? Especially in university settings i could imagine writing something like "Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter" is asking for trouble ...
