Evaluating Your Site

Site Looks Good - Is It Useable?

You have hired someone to design your site and at first blush it appears to be just what you want. The site looks great. But before you open your site to the world, you should evaluate the site from several different viewpoints. The following suggested checks are not necessarily in any particular order because each site owner will have different priorities.

Opening Page Information:
The first thing to look for on your new site is does the opening page accurately reflect your business? Sure it has your business name but:

can a viewer tell what your business is,

where you are located,

what your products and services are, and

how to contact your business?

Your opening page should briefly answer these question, details should be provided on other site pages.

Page Download Time:
Check that the opening page loads quickly. This should be tested using the type Internet connection you expect most of your targeted audience to have. If your audience is primarily in rural areas, use a dial-up connection. Even if you believe your audience will have high-speed Internet connections, try testing the loading time with a dial-up connection. Page loading speed is an indication of the pages size and overhead.

Page size is important especially from a search engine listing standpoint. Most search engines only read the first 3 to 4K of your page’s source code. If there isn’t any page-relevant text found in the first 3K, your page will be difficult to find, assuming it gets listed at all.

Page Layout:
Look at the page layout and try to guess what the search engines will read and index on that page. Where is your important information? The best way is to look at the page’s source code. If you have a difficult time locating and reading page-relevant text, so will the search engines. (See the articles on Controlling Page Size and Text-Only Page View.)

Site Navigation:
Make sure your site navigation is obvious to inexperience Internet users. Are the links clearly defined and do they stand out on the page and are the links consistent from page to page? Make sure each link is labeled so there is not doubt as to where the link goes and what type of information will be displayed. Don’t simply label a link "Products". Include more of a description like "Home Products" or "Business Products".

Page Title:
Check the title of each page. The page title is displayed at the top of your browser window. If it says something like "Home Page" change it to something more descriptive. The page title will be used by search engines as the title for the page so the title should reflect your business, product, or service. Do not title all pages the same as some inexperienced people do: "Page 1" or something equally as uninformative.

Navigation Link Tags:
Verify that all links have a TITLE tag description. This is a good way to add extra information about the link to both the search engines and the viewers. These tags become visible to the viewer if the mouse is held on the link for approximately one second. Also, some search engines read these descriptions for page-relevant information. If these descriptions use keywords and phrases used elsewhere on the page, they can improve page ranking and provide accessibility for visually impaired site visitors that use a reader. Don’t try spamming the engines. Make sure that the link description text describes where the link goes or what the page is about.

Image Tags And Descriptions:
Images should have ALT and TITLE tags because some newer browsers only read the TITLE tag, some older browsers only read the ALT tag, and IE reads both but overlooks the ALT tag if both are present. As with the links, image descriptions are read by search engines and also aide visually impaired site visitors. The description should describe the image and not be used to throw in keywords that have nothing to do with the image.

JavaScript Menus:
If your page and site uses a JavaScript menu system, always have a standard HTML link system somewhere on the page. Search engines cannot read JavaScript well and if there are no HTML links on the page, other pages on the site probably will not get listed. (See the article on Controlling Page Size for more suggestions when using JavaScript.)

Wrap Up:
These are some of the most important things to check on you new site. The main thing is verify that your site displays your products and services more than the skill of your web site designer. Fancy sites usually say more about the designer and little about the site’s primary function.