Site Audits 1 - Introduction to site audits
Reviewing your site is important, but there are many different approaches.
— Published January 27th, 2005 | by David Moore
You have a website, and you've been checking its performance against the targets you set during its planning (you did set measurable targets, didn't you?). You're also monitoring the traffic figures and feedback regarding the site.
So far so good, but you still not might not be getting a real sense of how well your site is functioning - is the content up to date and well-written, does the search feature work well, are the navigation and orientation clear?
A structured evaluation can deliver real benefits, providing a detailed picture of your current site, helping you create a prioritised roadmap for improvements.
However, there are many approaches to formal site audits. Usability expert Jakob Nielsen evaluates sites against guidelines of his own devising. In a recent newsletter, he explains how his firm has developed 1,277 'guidelines for Web and intranet usability . . . and we're not done yet.'
In addition to the high cost of having Jakob's team look over your site, Nielsen's prescriptive guidelines aren't appropriate for every situation - they don't address accessibility issues, for example.
Accessibility audits tend to follow one of a range of evaluation techniques, including the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), and country-specific recommendations such as the USA's Section 508 requirements and those from Ireland's NDA.
These are valuable techniques, but there are problems with the checklist approach to site assessment. Running a Bobby test is not enough to ensure that your site performs well for all users, just as ticking off Nielsen's guidelines does not mean your site is performing as well as it could be.
That's where heuristic evaluation comes in. The goal of heuristic evaluation is to identify problems that require informed human judgement. A small set of expert evaluators examine the web site and judge its compliance with recognized principles (the "heuristics").
Over the past three years, iQ Content has developed a comprehensive audit process that provides a detailed picture of the site's performance as a whole.
We judge the site on over fifty criteria (including usability and acessibility), broken down into three main areas:
- content
- functionality
- - design
The content criteria include evaluating the content's relevance, accuracy and use of appropriate file formats and metadata. We also look at how the content is written - does it follow standards for good web writing, such as short sentences, and clear headings, links and subheadings.
On the functionality side, we look at the search feature - can you search from every page, is there are and advanced search option, and are the results returned sortable and inclusive of file type and summary information (not just the page title). We also assess usability and the use of interactive features such as email newsletters, RSS feeds, online applications and information sharing (comment features and discussion boards, for example).
The design criteria include examining the site's navigation and information architecture, as well as its graphic design, user orientation features and accessibility - looking at 'usable accessibility', not just adherence to published standards.
With each of the criteria being graded from 1-5, and detailed commentary given, the audit results make it very clear where the site is performing well, and which areas need attention.
Next month we'll offer a how-to guide to carrying out your own audit, before looking at extending the audit process with benchmarking and recommendations in the final part of the series.
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