ON ANALYZING WEB SITES
by Marylaine Block
As some of you may know, I write a column called "The Finder's Keepers" for The CyberSkeptic's Guide to Internet Research. In that column, I demonstrate in 750 or 1500 words the value of a particular site to CyberSkeptic's subscribers, who are information professionals. I'm going to show you how I go about analyzing both the sites I choose to recommend and the ones I don't.
Most of my readers don't have the time or motivation to do as exhaustive an analysis as I do, so you may wonder why you might want to know this. I offer two reasons:
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So that you will appreciate the amount of time and considered judgment that is put into the reviews you read, not only in CyberSkeptic but in Choice, Library Journal, and other publications; they truly are time-saving devices for you.
- There is at least one site you SHOULD do this kind of exhaustive analysis on -- your own library's web site (and web index, if you've provided one). You need to know what's on it in the same way you need to know what's on your reference rolodex -- it is just as much of a quick guide to the information you will need to know, compiled by your colleagues who are sharing their knowledge here.
The first thing I do when I examine a web site is look for an "about this site" page. I want to know what the site's intended purpose is, what its scope is, who created it, who sponsored it, how material is selected for inclusion, what ethical standards guide its creation, how it's funded, and anything else I can find out.
If it's a library web site, I don't necessarily expect all this information, but if the library provides a directory of web sites, I do expect to see the selection criteria. This, incidentally, is not just a guideline for librarians to apply, and not just a reassurance for your users; it also serves as your legal protection if someone demands that you include THEIR site in your links. For sample selection policies, see the one I wrote for Best Information on the Net at http://library.sau.edu/bestinfo/selpolicy.htm and the one for Librarians' Index to the Internet at http://lii.org/search/file/pubcriteria.
The next thing I do is look for a site map or index. That's because I want to have a structural sense of the site. I want to know the range of information included and how it's organized. Web users come in three flavors: searchers, who want to get immediately to their specific information need; browsers, who want to drill down through categories to get a more conceptual grasp of the information or find something that isn't yet clearly defined in their minds; and those who do both. I want to see how the site satisfies ALL of those users. If there is not a good site index, I expect at least a good topical outline in the navigation bars.
While the sites I tend to write about do have a directory function, linking in relevant web sites, articles and primary sources, their primary function is to provide either original content, or unique means of access to substantial quantities of content. An example of original content provided by a library web site is the excellent Research Tutorial at the University of Wisconsin/Eau Claire's library <http://www.uwec.edu/library/tutorial/>, which, rather than plunging immediately into a list of resources, shows students what they need to think about, what questions they need to ask before they begin the research process. The newly redesigned National Library of Medicine site <http://www.nlm.nih.gov/>, which I wrote about in the July-August issue of CyberSkeptic, provides both unique content and unique access methods, with FOUR metasearch engines, each of which searches different sets of data.
I then click my way through every topic on the navigation bar to see what kinds of information will be provided for each. I look to see how the categories are further subdivided, and see if, by following them, I will arrive at particular topics that logically should be included within those categories. At AARP <http://www.aarp.org/>, for example, when I click on Money and Work, I expect that when I drill down, I will find information on estate planning. I click on Financial Planning, which does indeed have a subcategory on estate planning. That leads to a number of articles, including a complete estate planning guide. I'm a little distressed, however, to see that neither that guide nor the articles have been updated since 2002 (I routinely note the dates for all content, and check to make sure the links still work).
When sites are organized to provide different kinds of information to different user groups, I try being each kind of user to see if and how the site meets the needs such users would logically have. A library's site might create different services for user communities like children and teens; the National Library of Medicine has tailored sites for librarians, researchers, physicians, and consumers; FindLaw <http://www.findlaw.com> has tailored services to legal professionals, students, the public, business, and corporate counsel. Such sites not only offer specialized content; in many cases, they also offer specialized search engines. FindLaw's Litigation Watch search, for example, is an option only within the Corporate Counsel section.
I take note whenever really good types of information exist that are in no way evident from the navigation system. At the wonderful Perry-Castaneda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas <http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/index.html>, for instance, the Other Map Sites page provides links to Cartographic Reference Tools, which librarians would find very useful, but they won't know the site links to such tools unless they click on this page. At the time I wrote the article, I told the site's creators how disappointed I was that though the Map Collection had thematic maps scattered throughout its pages, there was no way of finding them; since then, the librarians have created a page of Thematic Maps and added that category to the navigation bar.
Next I try out every possible kind of search that the web site permits, with all kinds of topics that the site should logically be expected to cover. If the search box has a pull-down menu allowing me to choose which universes to search through, I try the same search in each of those universes and compare the results. I then run the same searches in standard search engines and compare those results to see how much of a site's content is only available through the site's own search engine.
I print out page after page of what I've found: the search results, the main pages from each category on the navigation bar with their further subdivisions, the site map, the help screens, the about-this-site page. Then I go out on my porch, with a cup of coffee and a highlighter, and read through them, marking the parts that seem especially useful or especially confusing, and noting the differences in results from different types of searches and any oddities about the search system.
Once I've done all this, I'm ready to make a stab at answering the central questions: 1) if I was the person this site was intended to serve, would I find what I need and what I would reasonably expect the site to provide; and 2) would I find it easily? Is the navigation intuitive and transparent, and is the search engine(s) up to the task? Of course, since I'm not a corporate counsel or a genetics researcher or a teen, I can't truly place myself inside their minds. I have to base this part of my analysis on my general knowledge of these people and on the kinds of questions they've asked me at the reference desk.
As I said, you don't have the time or need to do this kind of analysis on most web sites; you CAN trust reviewers to do this kind of thing for you. But I urge all of you to apply this kind of exacting analysis to your own library's web site. At the very least, you will end up knowing what's on your web site and understanding how it works. Better yet, you'll begin to understand how and where it fails, and what needs to be fixed.
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COOL QUOTE:
Still, ... sites should have a strong About Us section, because users often wonder who's behind a Web-based service, how it's funded, and whether it's credible. If you order from an e-commerce site, can you trust the company to ship the package? Will they take it back if it arrives in poor condition? If you register on a site, are they going to sell your personal information to anyone who can pay, and thus expose you to endless spam about everything from transaction-related products to offensive porn?
Trust and credibility are major issues on the Web, where even the biggest company exists only as a few words and pictures inside a browser window. The most deceitful and unethical company can look as good as a company with a long history of community involvement and honest customer relationships. Explaining who you are and where you come from does matter...
"About Us" -- Presenting Information About an Organization on Its Website." Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, October 27, 2003, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20031027.html
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