Web Site Creation: Good Practice Guidelines Self Assessment Of Project Web Sites Marieke Napier NOF-digitise Advisor UKOLN University of Bath UKOLN is supported by: URL

Web Site Creation: Good Practice Guidelines - 19 February Why? Self assessment of your Web site can be used to: Monitor compliance of your Web site with standards Report on usage of your Web site Monitor problems with your Web site Benchmarking of NOF-digi project Web sites can be used to: Identify areas of best practices Identify areas in which improvements are needed

Web Site Creation: Good Practice Guidelines - 19 February How? Many Web-based analysis services are available: HTML, XML and CSS validators to check on compliance with standards Link checkers Usage analysis Linkage analysis Performance monitoring Some services are available for free (e.g. funded by advertising and free service provides limited functionality) and others are licensed

Web Site Creation: Good Practice Guidelines - 19 February Systematic Monitoring You may find it useful to: Monitor the status of your Web site –Nos. of pages indexed. –Nos. of links to your Web site –Accessibility of your Web site –Compliance with standards –Downtime of the service Monitor trends –Do the findings change over time / after dissemination Compare your findings with your peers –Comparison with other projects –Comparison with other institutions –Comparison with other communities

Web Site Creation: Good Practice Guidelines - 19 February Monitoring Many evaluation tools and Web services are available (some for free) See for exercises from Auditing and Monitoring Your Web Sites workshop

Web Site Creation: Good Practice Guidelines - 19 February Some Examples… Size of your home page Look of your home page Does it work? Accessibility Broken Links How popular is it? Other browsers Statistics

Web Site Creation: Good Practice Guidelines - 19 February The Size of Your Home Page You can find out the size of your home page using various tools: Netmechanic Bobby

Web Site Creation: Good Practice Guidelines - 19 February The Look of Your Home Page What type of entry point is yours? A “rolling demonstration” of University entry points is available at:

Web Site Creation: Good Practice Guidelines - 19 February Does it Work? It is useful to check key pages for accessibility, validation and functionality. Web page validators include: NetMechanic Dr Watson DrHTML - single pages only LinkTool Usable Web EchoEcho

Web Site Creation: Good Practice Guidelines - 19 February Is it Accessible? The Bobby Web service can check the accessibility of individual Web pages The Bobby Java application can check the accessibility of Web sites WAVE is another accessibility checker

Web Site Creation: Good Practice Guidelines - 19 February Are there Broken Links? Monitoring the number of broken links on your Web site is very important Xenu LinkAlarm Xenu Linkguard Nodeworks Netmechanic Site valet

Web Site Creation: Good Practice Guidelines - 19 February How Popular is Your Site? There are a number of services that will tell you how many pages link to your Web site WebSiteGarage LinkPopularity Netscape’s What’s Related service is used through the Netscape browser

Web Site Creation: Good Practice Guidelines - 19 February What about Other Browsers? Does your home page (and Web site) work in: Netscape very popular in UK HE) IE (the most widely used browser) Significant (all?) versions and platforms of above Lynx (text browser which may be used by visually impaired) AnyBrowser DejaVu

Web Site Creation: Good Practice Guidelines - 19 February Comparing Statistics Hit counters have developed into comprehensive Web statistical services that can give immediate feedback on user visits Web-based statistical services such as SiteMeter provides information on the whole site Nedstat provides information on individual pages

Web Site Creation: Good Practice Guidelines - 19 February Conclusions To conclude: You should ensure that you have procedures for monitoring various aspects of your Web service A wide range of tools area available, including some which are free Note that tools may give flawed results - e.g. see paper on Automated Benchmarking Of Local Authority Web Sites at