Assignment Web 2

Report

2017

E-SKILLS MARGOT GUILLEMIN;LOAMMI GOETGHEBEUR;THIBAULT VO;HANNES VAN DEN HENDE

ARTEVELDE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE | Academic Year: 2017 - 2018

Table of Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 2

12 websites to analyse ........................................................................................................................ 2

Evaluation Criteria ............................................................................................................................... 2

Content: .......................................................................................................................................... 2

Authority: ........................................................................................................................................ 2

Functionality: .................................................................................................................................. 2

Attractiveness: ................................................................................................................................ 2

Visual representation of the results ................................................................................................... 2

Discussion................................................................................................................................................ 4

1. Authority ..................................................................................................................................... 4

1.1. Is the website secured? ...................................................................................................... 4

1.2. Is the website a credible source? ........................................................................................ 4

2. Content ....................................................................................................................................... 4

2.1. Is the content relevant? ...................................................................................................... 4

2.2. Is the content well organised? ............................................................................................ 5

3. Functionality ............................................................................................................................... 5

3.1. Is the website easy to navigate? ......................................................................................... 5

3.2. Is the interface well structured? ......................................................................................... 5

4. Attractiveness ............................................................................................................................. 6

4.1. Are the pictures of high quality? ......................................................................................... 6

4.2. Does the website have an appealing colour scheme? ........................................................ 7

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................... 8

References ............................................................................................................................................ 10

Introduction This report will evaluate twelve websites of our own choice on authority, content, functionality and

attractiveness. We’ve structured the report as follows: it has been structured in 3 sections. The first

section, the introduction includes an overview of the websites, criteria and a visual representation of

the results. The following section will consist of 4 parts, with two subsections each, representing the

criteria mentioned in the introduction. In each part we will discuss a single criterium, and explain

how these websites meet the standard that’s been set by them, or discuss why they don’t.

The last section will be our conclusion.

12 websites to analyse - Ruiterschool Rodeberg (KBR Systems, 2017)

- Luysterborg Linguistics (Luysterborg Linguistics, 2017)

- De Standaard (Mediahuis, 2017)

- Ansomat (Ansomat, 2017)

- Eat Your Kimchi (Eat Your Kimchi, 2017)

- Visit Singapore (Singapore Tourism Board, 2017)

- Business Insider Tech (Business Insider Inc., 2017)

- Nu Nl (Sanoma Digital The Netherlands B.V. NU, 2017)

- MSN (Microsoft, 2017)

- Horeca Vlaanderen (Horeca Vlaanderen, 2017)

- Financiën België (Federale Overheidsdienst Financiën, 2017)

- Alibaba (Alibaba.com, 2017)

Evaluation Criteria

Content: - Is the content relevant?

- Is the content well organised?

Authority: - Is the website secured? (https)

- Is the website a credible source?

Functionality: - Is the interface clear?

- Does the interface have a clean structure?

Attractiveness: - Are the pictures of a high quality?

- Does the website have an appealing colour scheme?

Visual representation of the results The colour code should be interpreted as follows:

- Green: the criterium has been met

- Yellow: the criterium has been (mostly) met, but there are aspects that deserve our

attention

- Red: the criterium has not been met.

Content rele-vant

Content organi-sed

Websi-te secured

Credi-ble source

Inter-face clear

Inter-face structu-re

High quality pictures

Appea-ling colour scheme

Rodeberg

Luysterborg

Standaard

ansomat

Kimchi

Singapore

UK Business insider

Nu.nl

Msn.com

Horeca

Financien

Alibaba

Discussion

1. Authority

1.1. Is the website secured? We can see there is an equal partitioning between HTTP and HTTPS. Most of the sites we reviewed

do not require personal information or credentials, some are just sites that provide information to

their visitors so all it has to do is function when people click it, this is why HTTP is used. However, all

sites that we have reviewed that require a login or personal information are HTTPS secured. This is

mainly because data has to travel from point A to point B. To make sure this data is not

compromised HTTPS is used, an algorithm is used to encrypt this data and secure the details visitors

have entered. Some sites (for example Standaard) are HTTP but HTTPS secured when using the log in

to this site so secure the log in information of their subscribers. Other sites that are created via an

online platform (for example Ansomat) are automatically HTTPS secured because they are created

via this platform. (Jeremy Dotson, 2017)

1.2. Is the website a credible source? The websites we have chosen are all credible sources with some minor exceptions. First, when

looking for a credible source online you start off with using sites that you know or use. When you

come across a site you don’t know or haven’t used before you should look at different criteria to

confirm whether this is a credible source or not. These criteria include; the credentials, domain,

data, design etc. The major part of our chosen websites are websites that offer a service or

information. Either the service is selling a product(s) like https://alibaba.com or providing a service

that helps people with something like https://financien.belgium.be/nl in our overview you can see

that we have listed the credible sites in green, these are sites that have all the criteria listed above.

Alibaba however is a site that allows multiple retailers and stores to create a web store on their site.

Even though the site is credible and used worldwide the people using it might not be. (Under30CEO,

2017) So, when purchasing you should always dig deeper on credibility and check for referrals,

vouches, etc. Even after this, it is still at your own risk. Our second exception is De Standaard

because this is a newspaper (website). Newspapers are written by journalists and have a way of

favouring their opinions on the matter. Newspapers should always be read with the necessary

amount of critical thinking. Making a clear distinction between subjective and objective opinions is

needed before you can call it a credible source. Our third exception is Eat your Kimchi. This is

because the site is hosted by a service that provides you with the ability to host a site. They don’t

own their personal site but are registered under a domain hosted by this service. This could

potentially jeopardize their credibility even though the owners of this site might be one hundred

percent legit. (University of Wisconsin - Green Bay, 2017) (Who Is Hosting This?, 2017)

2. Content

2.1. Is the content relevant? After analysing our websites, the content matched their domain. So, the content relevancy criterium

was overall green. Content relevancy is very important on your website. Take for example a news

site, the content on the website needs to be relevant for the reader. The reader wants to read an

article about the current news, but what if there wouldn’t be any news on a news site. The future of

your organisation would be none existing. For example, UK Business Insider, (Business Insider Inc.,

2017) if you want to find information about innovation and gain more insight in businesses. This site

is relevant if you want to find that information. This results in a lot of viewers around the world. If

the content didn’t fit the subject, no one would go looking for their information on this site.

2.2. Is the content well organised? On this criterium, we’ve given 10 out of the 12 websites a green light. We found the content to be

well organised. Only 2 websites were given a yellow light. If you compare the websites ‘De standard’

and ‘Msn.com’ (two with yellow marker), you’ll see the content organisation of both sites is rather

sloppy. You can find a lot of content and sometimes it’s just too much. On the one hand you can find

a lot interesting articles but on the other hand you find a lot of articles filling up the blank spaces.

Those websites should keep in mind: “less is more”.

Summarily, If you are looking for content on a website, you hope to find it easily. This can be done

with lay-out, search fields, search criteria etc. Another important aspect, is the new content in

chronological order? Or is the content divided in their right subdomain? If you look at a news site,

you can see there are a lot of different subdomains/tabs you can press on. Of course, the articles of

economy are in the economy section, sport in the sport section, culture in the culture section, etc.

3. Functionality

3.1. Is the website easy to navigate? Having a website be easy to navigate is very important. Research shows that if visitors of a website

cannot find what they are looking for within 59 seconds leave the site. (Miller, 2017) Purely from a

website analytics standpoint the ultimate goals are to get as many conversions (e.g. clicking on a

button or a purchase on the webpage) & hits (amount of images & text loaded) as possible. One

important factor will be the number of tabs in the navigation bar. One example of how this shouldn’t

be done is http://www.ruiterschoolrodeberg.be/. If someone wanted to enrol their child in riding

lessons, you’d expect the navigation bar to lead you to the page about lessons right away. In this

case it is under specialities. This has undoubtedly caused them to lose a lot of business.

We also didn’t think MSN.com was very easy to navigate at all either. It’s a clear case of information

overload and no user-friendly navigation options at all. If it wasn’t for their Search bar option, most

people would not be able to find anything on that website.

3.2. Is the interface well structured? Creating clear structure on a website isn’t always easy. A website must be easy to navigate but at the

same time it also needs to have a logical structure to it, so people find what they are looking for on

the website. Therefore, website creators must follow a few rules. For example, most people expect a

logo to be on the Top left corner of a website. (Common Places, 2017)

The structure of a website is of huge importance for Search engine optimization as well. Crawlers

and bots are constantly going through websites on a structural level to analyse which websites are

most relevant to a certain search. The more time users spend on a website (a.k.a. the more

attractive it is to them) the more attractive it will be for crawlers as well. The higher you are on this

ranking the more traffic your website will generate. (Bigby, 2016) One of the best examples we

found of a well-structured website was http://www.visitsingapore.com/en/. Not only is this website

incredibly easy to navigate but if any tourist types in visit Singapore. This website will pop up first

right below the Add section. So clearly this website gives people that want to find more info about

visiting Singapore find exactly what they were looking for on this website. (See figure 1.)

Figure 1 Google search result

4. Attractiveness

4.1. Are the pictures of high quality? Most of the websites we have chosen, generally do have high quality pictures. These days it’s not

very difficult to take high quality pictures, so this really isn’t surprising as most smart-devices come

equipped with relatively high-quality cameras. However, we did manage to find some exceptions.

One such example would be https://financien.belgium.be/nl.

Surprisingly enough (because being a government institution, you’d expect a certain degree of polish

to their website) we found an extremely low-quality picture on this website:

Figure 2 Low quality image retrieved from: https://financien.belgium.be/nl

At the end of the day one might forgive a government website for having some low-resolution

pictures here or there, but generally you’d expect a large retailer like Alibaba to have high res

images. As mentioned earlier in the report however because there are so many retailers using the

Alibaba platform there really is very little control about what those companies post i.e. Alibaba has

no control over the quality of the pictures posted. This really is a problem because it creates

uncertainty for the buyers about the quality of the product they are purchasing. (Under30CEO, 2017)

4.2. Does the website have an appealing colour scheme? What we have noticed with a lot of the websites we evaluated is that a lot of them either don’t use a

lot of colour and are for a lack of a better word quite bland looking e.g Alibaba, De Standaard.

Using colour on websites is tricky and getting it wrong can be detrimental to a business. The specific

colours that are appealing let alone acceptable vary from culture to culture but also between

different age groups and subcultures, which is probably why websites like De Standaard and Alibaba

keep their use of colour very modest as to attract a wide target audience

Using lots of colours on websites is a risk and research shows that there is a big difference between

what the younger generations like versus the older generations. The older generations tend to

prefer webpages with a light background and dark lettering because it is more “relaxing” to the eyes

e.g. De Standaard. Youngsters tend to prefer bright and vivid colours probably because colours

cause an emotional reaction. (2checkout, 2017). One perfect example of that is Eat Your Kimchi.

Their target audience is very young after all so the use of bright colours on their website is crucial.

Conclusion In conclusion we can say that most of the websites we had selected adhered to our criteria. All the

websites where a login was required were secured with HTTPS, and none of the websites weren’t

non-credible sources, if you took the necessary precautions. (Jeremy Dotson, 2017) Regarding the

content of the websites, we found them all to be relevant, even if the organisation of this content

was a little lacking at times. A section that was more engaging to report on, was the functionality of

these websites. Some of these websites weren’t clearly structured, which is frustrating for their

visitors. An important comment to make here, is that a study found that if visitors did not find the

information they were looking for within 59 seconds of entering the website, they left. (Miller, 2017)

This is especially important for websites of businesses, as this may cause a significant reduction of

income.

Another important element of the design of a website, is the quality of its pictures. Here we found

that all the websites adhered to this norm, with one glaring exception. The website of the financial

department of the Belgian government, which did contain a low-resolution image. (Federale

Overheidsdienst Financiën, 2017) Connected to this, is the importance of a colour scheme. Research

shows that across generations different colour schemes are preferred. (2checkout, 2017) Which

explains why websites such as Alibaba and De Standaard, have a more “bland” colour scheme,

whereas the Eat Your Kimchi website is full of bright colours, appealing to its young audience.

Reflection

This was an interesting task. The first part was working together as a group. So, communication was

an important factor. In our case, we do the alternative track. So, meeting with people, or contacting

people isn’t self-evident. You need to contact them on different mediums and try to find a good

schedule for each member. We contributed as a team and I think we have a good result. There were

different challenges in this task but by dividing and giving clear instructions, it all succeeded. If there

was anything not clear, you could always ask your team members and they were there to help each

other out. It is one of the many tasks but the subjects was interesting.

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http://www.avangate.com/avangate-resources/article/color-web-site.htm

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structure-your-website-for-seo

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http://uk.businessinsider.com/tech?r=US&IR=T

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http://www.eatyourkimchi.com/

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Retrieved from Federale Overheidsdienst Financiën: https://financien.belgium.be/nl

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www.horecavlaanderen.be/home

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www.ruiterschoolrodeberg.be

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