Monday, January 16, 2012

10 Checks for a Dated Website for the Non-technical

Don't have a background in computers?  Curious if the technology used to build your website is getting outdated?

Here are 10 checks to determine if your website is using more dated technology approaches.

These tests are a litmus test for staleness.  No single indicator warrants action, but taken together if there are multiple test failures, you probably want to consider reevaluating the effectiveness of your web presence.  You might also have an incredibly popular site that breaks all the rules below, but still accomplishes your business needs... each organization's situation is unique.

Feel free to leave a comment/question below or contact me at swervesolutions.com if you would like to discuss your questions privately.

Why should you care?

  • User Experience - Does the website appeal to your users?   Does it look modern and inviting to your prospective customers?  Do you have quirks that frustrate your users such as the back button not working as you expect or not being able to bookmark pages easily?  Does your website require your customers to install plugins like Flash or Java to view your site?
  • Maintenance Costs - How expensive will it be to get updates done to your website?  Does it use technologies where it is hard to find programmers or designers to work on your site?  Is the website code brittle and hard to change and hard to test?
  • Site Performance - How long does a user have to wait to download your pages?  Research suggests about two seconds is the patience level of most users  (http://sigs.aisnet.org/sighci/bit04/BIT_Nah.pdf) 
  • Ability to be found via Google and other search engines - Better search engine rankings generate more site traffic from users interested in your products and services.
  • Accessibility - Is your site friendly to those with visual or other impairments?   
One quick skill to learn - view HTML for your webpage

On every major web browser, you can view the HTML code that defines the page and links to resources that will be needed to render the page appropriately.

To view the HTML, while hovering over the body of the web page (but not over any pictures or graphics)

  • (Windows)  right click on the body of the web page    --- or ---
  • (Macintosh) two finger click --- or ---  click and control key at the same time 
and select "View Source" from the contextual menu.

For these tests, you won't need to understand the rules of this language, we'll just be searching for specific pieces of text in the HTML page.

To search, press

  • (Windows) the Control key and F at the same time --- or --- 
  • (Macintosh) the Command Key and F at the same time  


Test 1:  Valuable text buried in graphics

How to test:  Identify sections of text on your homepage such as on buttons, in headers and footers, in the main body of the document, and on top of pictures.  For various sections of text, take your mouse and try to select just a line of the text.  If you get the text selection cursor, similar to what you would see when selecting text in Microsoft Word or other word processors or text editors, and can select the text and not larger pictures behind the text then you are in good shape.


Implication:  search engine optimization, accessibility potentially, site performance



Test 2:  HTML tables used for page layout

How to test:  First look on your page, and identify tabular data.  If you don't have any spreadsheet-like grids with data populated (it is valid to have tables that appear without borders around the fields in the table... it is still a table), you shouldn't have any tables in your HTML file.  Next, view source.  Then search for "<table ".  If you find more of this search string than the number of tables visible on your page, your HTML page is relying on outdated technology.

Implication:  maintenance costs, search engine optimization

Test 3:  Obsolete HTML tags for page layout

How to test:  View source on your webpage, search for "<center" and "<font".  Any occurrences are failures for this test.

Implication:  maintenance costs, search engine optimization

Test 4:  Use of framesets

How to test:  View source on your webpage, search for "<frameset".  If you find this text, the test fails.

Implication:  usability, maintenance costs, search engine optimization

Test 5:  Use of inline styles

How to test:  View source on your webpage, search for "style="

Implication:  search engine optimization, maintenance costs

Test 6:  Not including alt attributes on img tags

How to test:  View source on your webpage.  Search for "<img".  to the right of this text will be a ">" symbol.  If you don't see "alt=" your test fails.

Implication:  accessibility, search engine optimization

Test 7:  Use of plugins

How to test:  View source on your webpage, search for "<applet" and ".swf".  There are legitimate uses for these technologies, but there are also plugin-free solutions to many problems originally solved by these technologies.

Implication:  maintenance costs, accessibility potentially, usability

Test 8:  No doctype specified

How to test:  View source on your webpage, search for "doctype".  If you don't find this text, it fails.

Implication:  maintenance costs

Test 9:  Excessive inline javascript

How to test:  View source on your webpage, search for "function ".  If you find more than three references, then the test fails.

Implication:  maintenance costs, search engine optimization

Test 10:  Use of obsolete tag attributes

How to test:  View source on your webpage, search for "alink=" and "vlink=" and "align=".  If you find this text, then the test fails.

Implication:  maintenance costs, search engine optimization

Bonus Test 11:  Not including the <title> tag or the <meta name="description" ... stanza


How to test:  View source and search for "<title" and "name="description"".  If either term does not appear, then the test fails.  If the text between <title> and </title> is longer than 70 characters, this is also a failure.  These fields have existed for many, many years in the HTML language, but they are sometimes left out accidentally.

Implication:  big impact on search engine optimization, usability, accessibility