Website Analysis

Before embarking on the task of making a website over, it is important to know what's right and what's wrong with the current site, how well it is serving your business, and where improvements can be made and new opportunities created. Before we rebuild, redesign, and upgrade an existing site, we ask many questions. For a $500 fee, we will examine and analyze your site and provide a report covering items listed below. We ask our experts to make the analysis.

You may want to just look at these aspects yourself and do a little self-examination. To make it easy we have divided the questions into several categories:

1. Accessibility: Is your site easy to find and fast to load?
2. Architecture: Is your site structured and organized logically and easy to use?
3. Functionality: Does your site carry out the intended tasks with efficiency and effectiveness? Are there important tasks that it does not yet support?
4. Look and feel: Does the site present a unified image befitting your business? Do all the pages look like they belong together?
5. Technical: Is there room for improvement for programming and other behind-the-scenes issues?

Accessibility:

• There are about 30 top Web search engines. Can you easily find your site on them? Can you find summary information about your company by entering your company or domain name?
• Can you find your site by business type or a search for your competitor?
• Have you made your site search-engine-friendly through HTLM coding?
• Have you taken advantage of available Web directories and trade information sites?
• How fast does your site load on a typical modem connection? Has size optimization and delivery accelaration been performed to make pages faster to load?

Architecture:

• Does the site clearly offer information for the intended types of audiences?
• Are the information structure, the flow of pages, and the relation among main and subpages effective and clear to visitors?
• Is the site easy and clear to navigate?
• Can the site be made easier to use?
• Is it always clear to a visitor if a page is from within your site or from an external site?
• Does the site offer a site map to guide visitors? And is there a way to search for information within the site?

Functionality:

• What exactly does you website do for your business?
  
• Are there other functions your site can serve that would be important for your business?
  
• How closely is your website integrated into your business?
  
• Can a visitor easily contact the key personnel right from your site? How fast can you provide a response from such inquiries?
  
• Do you have access to data on how many hits your site gets on a day-to-day and month-to-month basis?
  
• Do you routinely make announcements, news, product promotions, and other timely information available on your site?
  
• Can a customer request on-line help or advice from an expert?
  
• Are forms and transactions on your site secure?
• Can you easily modify information and change pictures on your site

Look and Feel:

• Does the site look attractive, clear, and employ visual communication principles?
  
• How impressive is the homepage?
  
• Do the pages look unified but not boringly uniform?
  
• Does your site avoid unnecessary blinking, coloring, and moving images that can distract from your messages?
  
• Have the page contents been copy edited? Are they self-consistent?
  
• Do all parts of your site look as if they belong together? How about the forms and the results produced from forms?
• Do the color scheme, the size and type of the fonts used, the page layout, and background color/images combine to project a desired mood or effect?
  

Technical:

• Is the information structure separated from its presentation (via CSS) so that the site can get a new look without too much work?
• Do all links work?
• Does the site work on all major systems and browsers?
• Is the site implemented for ease of maintenance and revision?
• Can your site become more responsive or interactive by incorporating dynamic HTML through Javascript and DOM programming?
• How efficient, effective, and secure is the server-side programming (CGI, PHP, and database support)?
• Has appropriate multimedia technology been used?
• Has attention been given to protocol efficiency to increase site speed and reduce network traffic?