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How to Evaluate a Website – Eight Tips
How to Evaluate a Website - Eight Tips
By Scott Buresh
Have you taken the time to thoroughly evaluate your website lately? That's right, I’m talking about evaluating your website- the front line of your worldwide sales force, your tireless, “never say no” marketing machine. Even if your company doesn't have a lot of time and resources to keep the site in tip-top shape, there are several things that evaluating your website can bring to your attention that you can do to tidy up at little or no cost. If you don't have the technical know-how to fix the issues that evaluating your website might bring to your attention, you can put any decent web designer or programmer on the job (nothing mentioned in this article requires more than a basic skillset).
Reiterate the Goals and Purpose of the Site
Hopefully your company had a goal or purpose in mind when the site was originally designed and launched. It may have been to promote brand awareness, drive sales leads, sell more product, etc. As the first step of the process to evaluate your website, confirm that these goals have not changed, and if they have changed, determine what your new goals and objectives are. Throughout the process of evaluating your website, continually ask yourself if each site element helps to meet the goals of the site.
Take an inventory
Set aside a time when you can evaluate your website fully, and try to conduct this visual evaluation through the eyes of a new visitor. Click on every link and view every page. Hopefully, the site still accurately represents your organization. While evaluating your website, be on the lookout for content items that are inaccurate, out of date, or no longer important. Any such issues discovered while evaluating a website should be addressed and corrected as soon as possible.
Evaluate your website with a spreadsheet or list
It's a good idea to keep a “to do” list for the website at all times. This list can be as simple as a Word document or as complex as a database, including (at the very least) each item to be modified (page, copy, graphic, link, etc), the desired action, (add, remove, update), and the priority (low or high). Then, if you or your staff happens to have a few minutes here or there to evaluate the website, this list can be continually reduced in an efficient manner (or sent off to your web designer as needed).
Eliminate Broken Links While Evaluating Your Website
One of the most common, embarrassing, and easily correctable maintenance tasks is identifying broken links when you evaluate your website and fixing them. Working links may lead to other pages (either to your site, and other external sites) or to graphic images. Broken image links appear as either a little red “x” or a blank box representing where a graphic is supposed to appear. Broken page links will result in the dreaded “404 FILE NOT FOUND” error message. Hopefully, through the process of evaluating your website, you've already compiled a list of these annoying anomalies.
If you'd like to double check for additional links you may have missed when evaluating your website, you can use a free tool such as the Netmechanic Toolbox which will not only verify all of your links, but also check for spelling errors (just don't rely on this as your sole method for spell checking) and perform other useful functions such as checking page load time and discovering browser compatibility issues. When you do come across a broken link while you evaluate your website, it's usually one of two things: an incorrect path to the graphic/page has been used, or the graphic/page no longer resides on the server. Have your webmaster correct the issue in either case. No link is always better than a broken one.
Clean Up Dirty or Distorted Graphics
If you've successfully determined that all graphics are in fact present and accounted for when you evaluate your website, the next step is to look closely and see if any of them could use a little polishing. Graphic editing programs have come a long way in the last few years and can prepare and export graphics that are much more sharp and vibrant. If, after evaluating your website, you suspect some of your images may have been placed on the site with older software you might want to re-treat them (preferably using the original art, photos, etc.). Also, if you see any graphics that look “squished” or “stretched”, this usually means that the “height” or “width” setting for that particular image in the code is not correct. This is literally a 5 second correction that can make quite a difference.
Check Your Colors and Fonts
When you evaluate your website, make sure that your fonts are consistent throughout your site. If your site isn't utilizing “stylesheets”, you may want to consider them. They are a quick and easy way to ensure that each all pages employ the same font treatments to similar content (headers, body, links, etc.). While evaluating a website, you should also check that your colors are consistent throughout the site. If you've found that the background color or pattern has become outdated or tiresome, it's a very quick and painless procedure to give the entire site a fresh look.
Update Your Information
If your site proclaims that your “next” event is 10 months ago, or your “coming soon” has “gone and went”, bring the site back up to the current date by addressing these types of issues. Nothing says “your visit isn't all that important to us” more then serving your visitors out of date information. If you don't have the time or resources to continually update and evaluate your website, make sure that you add as little time-sensitive information as possible.
Take Out the Trash
One of the nice things about working to thoroughly evaluate your website is that you get the opportunity to “cleanse” your site of junk. This might include gimmicks or bells and whistles that seemed great years ago but now serve as nothing more than a distraction to the visitor, prohibiting them from reaching the main objective. Again, if it's not directly helping you reach your sales and marketing goals, then get rid of it. However, keep in mind while evaluating your website that one person's junk might be another's treasure, so always check with other people (particularly the boss!) before throwing out the trash.
Once you get your site in tip-top shape, don't wait a long time to evaluate your website again. With a commitment to spending a few hours a month, you can maintain a quality, current web presence 12 months a year.
© Medium Blue 2007
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