Assessing the Communication Power of Your WWW Site

A variety of ways exist to examine your World Wide Web (WWW) site. In fact, a thriving industry has developed with consultants and independent agencies that, for a fee, will analyze and evaluate your WWW site. Given the current and projected future use of WWW sites, all of us should be measuring the "communication power" of our WWW Sites.

What factors can be used in measuring "communication power?" The following represent areas or dimensions of your WWW sites that can be used in structuring evaluation activities. The primary information source for the majority of these evaluation efforts is the current users and the target audience(s) of your WWW site.

WWW site evaluation can address the following areas:

• Content of Your WWW Site
• Ease of Navigation
• Visual Attractiveness
• Organization of WWW Site Information
• Interactive Dimensions such as Chat Rooms
• Search Engine Availability
• Graphics, Audio, Video, Animation Components
• Accessibility Provisions
• Uniqueness, Innovativeness, and Currency of Information
• Links Within and Out of Site
• Forms, Electronic Mail, and Other Methods for Interacting with Website Personnel

Visitors to websites can be asked for information about their "visit." Using forms, e-mail, and other accessible formats for obtaining this information, visitors might be asked:

• How much did you enjoy your visit to our website?
• Were you confused at any point during your visit?
• Did you become frustrated in navigating our site at any point?
• Did you find your visit to be useful or a waste of time?
• What did you find to be most useful and least useful in the site?
• Did our website meet or exceed your expectations?
• What was your level of satisfaction with the site?
• Would you return to our website?

Your website is creating an impression of your project and your organization as a whole. Use of visitor sampling is a way to sense how others perceive the communication power of your WWW site. Evaluation data reveal relative strengths and weaknesses of your site. Experience teaches that websites must be dynamic, ever-changing entities to retain their positive impression on users.

There are several strategies that can be used to collect data concerning your site. Four basic methods have proven effective:

• User-Behavior Tracking -this strategy measures how much time users of your site are spending at each location, what features they are using, what paths they are choosing to move through the site, and where they came from. This strategy requires special software and may require consultant assistance.
• Online User Survey -this strategy can be effective in requesting or requiring users to give some feedback information about their perception of specific features of your site.
• Focus Groups -this strategy can be used to obtain fairly detailed information about user perceptions and also generate ideas about new or improved features of your site.
• Benchmark Comparison -this strategy allows website developers (and others) to compare several sites that are similar in their purpose, orientation, and target audience. This type of comparison allows for developers to project areas in which their site could be generally improved and/or made more accessible.

Concept mapping can also be used as a tool in evaluating websites. Generally speaking, conceptual mapping for the purpose of website evaluation simply provides an activity-base for convening a wide array of stakeholders that may find your website useful from their varied perspectives. The activity of the convened group is to "map out" the content of your website and determine the relative importance of the components from their individual perspectives. Concept mapping can also be used to elicit information from stakeholders concerning their expectations for your website and how well these expectations have been met by your website to date. Statistical analyses of the resulting data can display relationships between the "concepts" mentioned by the stakeholders.

Many sites employ a traditional survey approach to gather information from visitors to their websites. These website forms can gather any of the data mentioned earlier or can focus on particular parts of your website that you might particularly want to learn more about.

As use of the WWW increases, it becomes more important for us to evaluate the degree of effectiveness the medium has for your target audiences. Website evaluation is an activity that merits increased attention from all who create and maintain sites on the WWW.

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