Evaluating and Benchmarking – how does your site measure up?

Think of your favourite website. Now think of six reasons it is your favourite. Now think of your own website, assuming it’s not your favourite, and ask yourself how it ranks within the six criteria you chose.

We all do it – judge websites. But most people rely on their first impression (see: You’ll never get a second millisecond to make a first impression) and can’t articulate the criteria that they are using to judge a site. Some may indicate colour, photos, fonts and general layout. The savvier user will mention ease-of-use and ability to find information. But in general, people don’t have the words or experience to tell you what is wrong with their site. They just know it sucks and isn’t working for them.

Getting users to be more specific is the value of good interviewing and focus group assessments. Interviews and focus groups will reveal problems and provide invaluable suggestions for improvement, but understanding where a site goes wrong and what direction it should be going in can be best ascertained through a thorough evaluation and benchmarking against competitive sites.

Evaluation and benchmarking criteria for a good site
What are the best practices that make up a good evaluation? According to “How visitors rate sites” by Larisa Thomason on Netmechanic here are some things to look for:

• Visual design or a “professional look” is the first test of a site’s credibility and first impressions have the biggest impact on a user’s overall impression.“Choose a color scheme that reflects your audience’s preference not your own,” writes Thomason.
• Typography: use safe fonts that are common to standard use.
• Images and Multimedia: dazzle but don’t annoy. Photos should be real and, where possible, action oriented – they should tell a story. Multimedia should have a purpose and should be quick to load.And you should always have alternative information for those who don’t want to go the multimedia route.
• Layout includes the overall structure and bullets and headings as well as the placement of information. (Plan where your information goes – don’t leave huge blocks of white space).
• Content: according to Netmechanic “sites should be designed to deliver information to visitors.” Never forget that “content is king”.

Indeed, content is very important and so is planning. If you don’t have a plan, it often manifests itself on the site in the form of poor information architecture and usability. Intranets are especially known for getting out of hand with multiple “micro-sites”, lack of standards and no governance model. The poor person in charge of posting information (yes, most don’t even have a qualified webmaster and some don’t even have anyone with web responsibilities listed in their job descriptions), is told to “just put it on the intranet” without instructions as to placement, inter-linking, or archiving. Consequently, the site is a hodgepodge of materials without a plan to support and standardize what, where and how information is available.

Aside from content and planning, sites should be evaluated based on look and feel, usability, layout, and tools and innovation. Some basic criteria wI recommend:

• Content: needs to be current and frequently updated to be considered trustworthy. It should be written for the web, in scannable chunks with lots of headings to break up content – not just print material that is posted.
• Planning: “most intranets in a mess lack a common vision for what the intranet should be,” according to Jerry Stevenson in “Taming a Chaotic Intranet” in an item posted with IABC. Does the site have a mission, vision and goals? Are content owners identified? Is there a governance model? Are metrics being recorded and analyzed?
• Look and Feel: consistency is vital – set and follow standards and guidelines. If you find microsites popping up using every colour scheme imaginable, your site loses credibility.
  Usability: all sites should have a sitemap, breadcrumbs (path trail), a good search engine and a taxonomy that works with your audience. Avoid using acronyms and non-descriptive words that don’t tell the user what content can be found under that category.
• Layout: scrolling should be kept to a minimum and white space should be part of the design, not an indicator that you ran out of content.
• Tools and Innovation: can people do what they need to do? A good search engine that provides forgiveness for misspelling is one standard tool. Consider collaboration tools like wikis, communication innovations like blogs, and applications like calculators. Make sure that if a page is likely to be printed, it prints well or has an alternate format. And if you have online forms make them easy – the best are forms that can be completed and submitted online. It is not innovative to make people print a form, fill it out in ink, and then send it somewhere.

Once you evaluate your own site and give it a score, you should do the same to about four other competitive sites. Granted, it is difficult to benchmark against other intranet sites, which is why it is best left to professionals who have the expertise and relationships to get permission to look at intranets for various organizations. But you should still be able to evaluate your site with best practices.

Best practices are good ideas that work: when you see a good idea put it to use on your site and track it to make sure it works for you. You should evaluate your site on a regular basis; after all it is a work in progress and should be continually updated to meet the changing needs of your organization. Don’t leave your evaluation to phrases like “it sucks” it might be easier to improve then you think.

Getting printed content online – means rewriting not just posting

Content has long been crowned king of importance. The reasons are obvious – give people the information they need or want to achieve their goals or tasks and ultimately you achieve your goals for success. So if content is so important why isn’t it given the attention it deserves?

Posting brochure wear online is a common practice that doesn’t give content the respect it deserves. You wouldn’t put a film on radio or a radio spot on a poster – each medium needs messaging tailored for it. Though it is slowly seeping into the culture that websites are viewed differently then print and there seems to be a growing understanding that writing for the web is different then writing for print, people are still taking the easy way out and posting print material online “for now”. But it just doesn’t work – the truth is, anything written for print needs to be rewritten if it’s going on your website.

Content for Print
When writing and designing for print it is understood that the information printed will be static – it can’t change and therefore should have some longevity. The printed matter usually serves one master – either promotional/marketing purposes, informative or educational. Very rarely will you have a printed piece that has multiple mandates. Therefore, print pieces usually have one tone or style of writing – it can be formal – say for an annual report, or informal – for an event. And since the audience can be defined writing can reflect the audiences’ demographics – annual reports are typically written for the financially savvy, there is an expectation of knowledge; promotional pieces are littered with adjectives. Print is understood to be a push communication – you need to distribute it to a defined audience where you’ll be sure they’ll receive it but never sure if they’ll read it.

And now you want to put that online?

Let’s change gears, the information highway has its own rules, and while content still reigns it needs some careful handling.

Content for Online
Content for online is meant to be dynamic – it better change or you’ll lose your audience. The more it changes and invites interactivity the more respect your site will get. Online content serves many masters – people can enter your site from various pages and for various reasons – they may be searching for information or be ready to purchase – and you need to be ready for the opportunity to give them what they want. You’re not going to know your audience before they get to your site so writing needs to be simple, clear and concise. Online is understood to be a pull communication – you need to pull or attract people to your site, once on your site the goal becomes getting them to return and even to stay a while.

Print and online are different mediums. People even see and read them differently. Consider that:

• Reading is harder to do online since screens have flicker rates and varying resolutions so your eyes need a break more often than with print and screens are read 25% slower than paper.
• 79% of readers scan pages so content online needs to be chunked into manageable bites with subheadings denoting different topics.
• Wording needs to be concise – you have seconds to get your point across and you’re competing with all types of distractions.
• People read print in a linear way – one page at a time; start to finish. People jump around web pages – following links according to their interest – they may come back to the original article or they may not.

So it’s not a simple case of putting print online as website content. Print material should be condensed by 50% when being put online and it needs to be rewritten.
Here are some tips for converting printed content for use online:

1. As Thomas Jefferson said, "The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do."
2. As to the adjective, follow Mark Twain’s advice “When in doubt, leave it out.”
3. Check your spelling and grammar – you can even turn on a readability option in Word, under Tools> Spelling and Grammar, that will indicate grade level and reading ease.
4. Use links to reference or add depth to different areas.
5. Add credibility - Source your material and include its date. Update content frequently.

And for anything over one screen long or about 250 words – please make sure there is a print option. Content is King and some people will always prefer the printed page.
Sources for statistics: Nielsen Norman Group; Sun.com