Corporate So

Website Evaluation

Background

By the end of 2000 there were in the region of 400 million internet users.  By May 2002 this had risen to over 580 million and is expected to rise to 795 million by 2005.  Online retail sales are predicted to show double-digit gains year on year through 2008, producing sales of £143bn in the next five years (source Forrester Research).  However, statistics indicate that 70% of transactions are abandoned and only 22.2% are successfully completed.

The commercial opportunities provided by the Web are difficult to qualify and quantify. Nonetheless there is little doubt that the Web is already having and will continue to have a major impact on how commerce is conducted. Websites can serve many commercial purposes ranging from advertising, through information provision to organisation-wide applications linked to business critical databases.

Designing a usable and commercially effective site is not a simple task. The challenge to designers is to facilitate the commercial objectives of a site and this is only attained when a site’s design, in terms of its presentation, structure and behaviour, is appropriate to its audience.  

Our Approach

The Web Site Evaluation Service is a cost effective assessment of the quality of Site Designs with respect to their anticipated audience, commercial objectives and best design practice.

An Expert Evaluation is conducted by members of Corporate Solutions with a detailed knowledge and experience of usability issues.  The output from each evaluation includes the identification of design inadequacies together with actionable recommendations for their improvement.  Such an evaluation also identifies good aspects of a design that should not be altered.

Corporate Solutions ensure that websites adhere to the usability principles ascribed by our STUDIO method and other industry conventions such as Nielsen’s 10 heuristic guidelines.  In addition, realistic scenarios of use are followed to help validate the findings of the evaluation.

The Website Evaluation is a stand alone service. However, it is a service that can complement usability testing by enabling the rectification of design problems in advance of usability testing. 

Following an expert evaluation, the findings are collated in a report to provide an overall assessment of the site and offer recommendations.  The report typically includes:

	Executive summary;
	Descriptions of problems encountered;
	Frequency of occurrence of problems;
	Ratings of the severity of problems;
	Actionable recommendations regarding required changes.

Our Experience

Corporate Solutions has extensive experience of providing usability services as gained from working with many major organisations including the Home Office, GlaxoSmithKline, J.P. Morgan, Thames Water and Reuters.

For more information, please contact us