Ch.9: Evaluation

Chapter 9: Evaluation

Characteristic of Good Websites: 

1. Original, Fresh ContentContent is king in the web world. People visit websites for the primary purpose of finding content, so make sure you deliver. Website content should be unique and up to date. Fresh content will keep visitors and search engines coming back for more. Don’t forget to proofread!

2. Target Audience From a quick scan of your website, visitors should be able to determine what you offer and how you can benefit them. A good website will have headlines and text that speaks to the target audience’s needs and wants. Many websites simply list what their company does without saying how they can benefit their target audience. Keep your audience in mind when designing your website to be sure that it will appeal to them and encourage them to take action (whether that is to submit a contact form, signup for a newsletter or buy a product).

3. User-Friendly Navigation A good website has content that is easy to find. Pages should be organized and named in a way that the target audience will easily understand. For instance, a services page would be better labeled “Services” than “Business Solutions.” Keep your navigation consistent from page to page to avoid any possible confusion. Double check all your links to make sure they are working. Make sure that your most popular content is no more than a click away from your homepage. If your website has a lot of content, provide a search box so visitors can quickly find what they are looking for.

4. Simple and Professional Design A good website will have an attractive layout that is easy on the eyes. Be sure your colors contrast well and your text doesn’t require a magnifying glass to read. Personally, I can’t stand reading large amounts of content written in white on a black background. It strains my eyes. Reducing the contrast a bit can help (light grey text on dark grey background). 

Lots of text can overwhelm a user. Breaking up text into subheads and bullet points will improve the layout of the page and make the text more scannable. No one has time to read every word on a page.

Use design elements to draw attention to or to enhance the content of a page. With every design element added, take a step back and make sure it serves a purpose and does not detract from the usability of the site. Put things where users expect them to be. However, do try to make your website look unique. Just remember that simple, professional design will be much more effective than flashy, overcrowded design.

5. Speed How many seconds will you wait for a page to load before you give up and leave a website? Many factors can affect the loading time of a website including coding, number of graphics, the server speed, traffic volume on the website and the capabilities of a user’s computer. 

Make sure your server has the proper amount of space/bandwidth for your website and that your website code is lightweight. Use large graphics sparingly. Use CSS styles in place of graphics where possible. Waiting for large graphics or a fancy flash animation to load on each page will surely turn away some visitors. 

6. Search engine optimization SEO is one of the most commonly neglected aspects of a website, but a website is useless if no one can find it. Think about the keywords that users may search for to find a product or service you offer. Do some research to see how often those keywords are searched for through a tool like Google’s Keyword Tool. Use keywords in titles, meta tags, headings, file names and in the content of your site. Search engine optimization can mean the difference between getting 500 visitors a month and 500+ visitors a day. 

7. Link building Links are an important factor in determining where your website appears in search engine results. Find as many legitimate sites as you can that will link you your website. Add your link to your business profile in directories like Google Local, Yahoo! Local, Merchant Circle, Insider Pages, Yellow Pages, LinkedIn and more. Submit articles and PR to sites that will include a link back to your website. The best way to get links to your site, however, is to provide unique and interesting content that people want to link to. You can make it easy for them to share your content by providing links or buttons such as the addthis.com button. 

8. Tracking A good website is a work in progress. A nice tool like Google Analytics will keep track of the number of people who come to your website, what pages they viewed, where they came from, what keywords they used in search engines, how many left after the first page and more. Unlike other media, websites can be easily tracked to see what is working and what isn’t. This data will help you to improve the quality and structure of your site.

Conclusion 

Remember to include these characteristics in your next website design project. A professional-looking website with interesting content that is easy to navigate and can be found in search engines is sure to bring value to your business.

Feel free to comment. What other ingredients can spice up a website? What has been your most effective strategy in gaining website traffic? 

Sources:http://www.successdesigns.net/articles/entry/characteristics-of-a-good-website/

Example of Good Websites:

www.bluefly.com

www.thetrip.com

www.gap.com

www.netgrocer.com

This article lists examples of Bias in Wikipedia, related to Barack Hussein Obama:

In a most deceitful, fascist political tactic Wikipedia's biography on Barack Obama discusses in detail his early childhood from when his parents met in 1960 to 1994 when Obama first served on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago. Then the article skips 1995 when Obama accepted the nomination and ran as a candidate of a Marxist political party called the New Party,and it jumps ahead to after "Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996."

 The stink of intellectual corruption in Wikipedia reeks of deceit, censoring an entire year of Barack Obama's life as a candidate before he got elected.

Barack Obama cannot give a coherent speech without reading from a teleprompter,and even had two of them set up in an elementary school just to talk to reporters there. But Wikipedia's lengthy entry about Obama does not mention the teleprompter, not even once.

Wikipedia lists Factcheck.org as a "non-partisan" "'consumer advocate' for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics."

However, two attempted edits were deleted pointing out factcheck.org falsely claims that Barry Soetoro (aka Barack Obama) has produced his birth certificate: "FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate."This claim contradicts the fact that the document they refer to is a copy of a Certificate Of Live Birth, produced in 2007, as opposed to a Birth Certificate. While later in the page, it states that detractors claim it is a "'certification of birth', not a 'certificate of birth'" (actually "Certificate Of Live Birth" and "Birth Certificate" respectively). Factcheck.org clouds the verbage by getting the actual terms wrong and presenting the two items as synonymous.

Barack Obama lost by a 2-1 margin in a congressional primary in 2000, but Wikipedia reduces that fact to merely one hard-to-find sentence amid its exaggerated praise.

Wikipedia's entry on Barack Obama claims that he "was selected as an editor of the law review based on his grades and a writing competition,"

when in fact the Harvard Law Review has long used racial quotas for admission.

Wikipedia added a "Controversies" sections to their article for the "Presidency of George W. Bush"but not to their article on the "Presidency of Barack Obama"It has since been removed.

In addition to the previous example, there was a massive Wikipedia article for "Criticism of George W. Bush,"but the article for "Criticism of Barack Obama" had been deleted at least FOUR TIMES since October 2008 with excuses like "Article that has no meaningful, substantive content" and "Attack page or negative unsourced BLP." 
Wikipedia has since redirected "Criticism of George W. Bush" and added "Public image of" articles for both presidents, however President Bush's article is heavily negative while President Obama's is filled with glowing, pandering fluff with very few meaningful criticisms.

The article about the legitimate questions surrounding President Obama's birth certificate is entitled "Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories," however one is hard-pressed to find such bold use of the phrase "conspiracy theory" in articles about Dominionism, the 9/11 Truth movement, and many other conspiracy theories that the left favors. 
The article also describes advocates of the questions as "fringe" several times despite including the likes of Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, but the same word is only used once in the 9/11 Truth movement article (and it uses it in a quote stating that the movement isn't fringe) and not at all in the Dominionism article.

Wikipedia made no mention of the fact that President Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder called the United States a "nation of cowards"when it comes to the discussion of race until about two weeks after Holder insulted America. 

In typical Wikipedia fashion, it was made to sound as if only conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh objected to the attorney general's crass insult and obvious contempt for the citizens of the United States of America. As of 3/8/09, there is no mention on Wikipedia of Obama's rebuke of Holder's "cowards" insult or of the fact that Holder wants an assault weapons ban. Wikipedia feels that the Barack Obama article should omit any mention of William Ayers and the Weather Underground. Wikipedia's mobocracy has decided that you, the public, have no need to learn about Obama's past relationships that made national headlines. No mention of Obama's ties to ACORN either. 

Wikipedia covers for Obama and his Libyan war. 287,304 byte article mentions Obama's name once, the very last sentence. Despite the UN, NATO, France and now Sudan, Wikipedia calls it a civil war.

Wikipedia does not make any mention of the man who influenced Obama, John Maynard Keynes' known fraud and pedophilia. 

http://www.conservapedia.com/Examples_of_Bias_in_Wikipedia:_Obama