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Effective Web Site Training Workshop:
Benchmarking Web Sites
Brian Kelly
UKOLN
University of Bath
Email
[email protected]
URL
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/
UKOLN is supported by:
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Timetable
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10:00 Registration
10:15 Welcome
10:30 Benchmarking Web Sites
11:00 Hands-on Benchmarking Exercise
12:30 Lunch
13:30 Hands-on Benchmarking Exercise (cont)
14:30 Report Back
14:45 Quality Assurance
NOTE
15:00 Discussion
Times are subject
to change
16:00 Conclusions
A
centre of expertise
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management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
16:30
Workshop
ends
A Bit About Me...
Brian Kelly:
• UK Web Focus – a post funded by JISC and MLA to
advise HE / FE and MLA communities on effective
use of the Web
• Based in UKOLN – a national focus of expertise in
digital information management
• Based at the University of Bath
• Involved in Web since 1993, while working in
Computing Service at University of Leeds
• Links with IT Service & Library communities
• The workshop has been informed by UKOLN’s
WebWatch work and the WebWatch column in
Ariadne
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A Bit About You...
In small groups address the questions:
• Who are you, where do you work and what do you
do?
• What do you want to get out of this workshop?
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Your Expectations
Learning
Best practices
Sharing
Finances
Your Interests
& expectations
Quality
Testing
Staffing
Checking
Constraints
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Session Aims
This session:
• Hands-on exercises with group discussions
By the end of the session you should:
• Be able to benchmark your Web site in relation to
other sites in your community
• Have had hands-on experience in using auditing
and evaluating tools
• Be aware of common problems
• Be aware of how a quality assurance methodology
can help to avoids problems
• Be in a position to decide whether to adopt this
methodology in your organisation, region, sector, …
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Today’s Exercises (1)
You will:
• Use a set of Web-based tools for
evaluating a variety of aspects of your
Web site
• Work in small groups and share your
findings and discuss the implications
This session:
• Encourages collaboration and sharing
• Is not meant to be competitive!
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Today’s Exercises (2)
In the hands-on exercises your will evaluate:
• The size of your organisation’s home page
• The accessibility of your home page
• The validation of your home page
• How popular your Web site is
 How many sites link to it
 How many people visit it
• How your Web site looks with different browsers
• Etc.
Now open the exercises handout
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Ex. 1.1
The Size of Your Home Page
You can find out the size of your home page using
various tools:
• NetMechanic
• Bobby
• …
http://www.netmechanic.com/
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Ex. 1
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
• …
http://watson.addy.com/
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Ex. 2
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 (now licensed software)
• WAVE is an alternative to Bobby
http://bobby.watchfire.com/
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Ex. 2.6
Are There Broken Links?
Monitoring the number of broken links on your Web
site is very important
http://www.linkalarm.com/
Desktop and Webbased tools are
available:
• Xenu
• LinkAlarm
• Linkguard
• Nodeworks
• NetMechanic
• SiteValet
• …
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Ex. 3.1
3.2
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
http://www.linkpopularity.com/
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Ex. 4
What About Other Browsers?
http://www.anybrowser.com/
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
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Benchmarking Exercises
You have:
• Benchmarked your Web site in relation to others
in your community
• Recorded your findings
And learnt about:
• Some of the issues involved when using
externally hosted Web tools
• Other benchmarking activities
• WebWatch surveys of communities
Once you have completed the exercises,
report on your findings
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Home Page Size Issues
There are certain issues necessary for consideration
when using these tools:
• What is a home page?
 Splash screens
 Spawning new windows
• Frames
• Graphics and graphics folders
• Dynamic pages
• robot.txt files
See <http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue28/web-watch/>
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Other Benchmarking Activities
What other type of benchmarking activities are
useful?
• Monitoring Content Quality and ‘Freshness’
• New developments and technologies - scripts,
other markup languages, personalisation
• Stress and security
• Search engine used on site and 404 pages
• Server numbers
• Visibility on search engines
• Usability e.g. by evaluating user feedback
• Performance checkers and Independent testing
services
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Implementing A Benchmark Survey
To implement your
own WebWatchstyle benchmark
across a community
you can simply
examine WebWatch
articles and adapt
the HTML for your
own use.
Further details at
<http://www.ariadne.ac.
uk/issue29/web-watch/>
Technique Used
• Use the Web service on a site
• Copy URL into template
• Determine URL structure
• Use as basis for use with other URLs
http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/bobbyServlet?URL=
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mla.gov.uk%2F&output=Submit&gl=wcag1-aaa
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Conclusion
• Different tools give different results and results
can be limited. The results should be analysed
carefully - like statistics
• Independent testing services can be beneficial
• Comparison is useful
• However a league table is not enough, for this
type of evaluation. To have a point there should
be follow up action
Any questions?
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