Web Page Evaluation

There are many articles and web pages devoted to WWW site and page evaluation and your favorite search engine will discover a variety of approaches. Below is a relatively simple approach that you may wish to use when a 534 exercise asks you to evaluate a web site. No claim for originality is made.

Speed

• The home page downloads quickly.

Initial Impression

• The home page is attractive and encourages viewing.
• The page is long enough to quickly answer questions about purpose and utility but short enough to be quickly browsed.

Navigation

• It is relatively easy for you to find what you are looking for
• It is relatively easy to move from page to page and from link to link
• Links are clearly labeled and are easy to use

Special Effects

• Graphics are appropriate, clear, and attractive
• Graphics are clearly identified
• Images and icons are used consistently throughout the site
• Audio or video links are appropriate and serve a useful purpose
• Audio or video links download in a reasonable amount of time
• Interactive elements are useful and take reasonable amounts of time to load and perform.

Authority

• The person and organization responsible for the WWW site are clearly identified
• It is reasonable to believe that those responsible are objective and knowledgeable

Content

• The site has a clear focus/purpose
• The site is appropriate for a particular audience
• The site contains unique information
• The site contains a reasonable amount of useful information
• Information appears to be objective or clearly states its viewpoint if subjective
• The information is well organized and clearly identified
• Links are appropriate, work, and are limited to sites of quality.

If it would be useful, you can score each of the elements above using a value of 1 for poor, 3 for average, and 5 for excellent. If there are 20 elements, a score of 100 would be a premier site and 20 would be a poor one.