Now that your web site is up and ready, don’t be in too much of a hurry to show it to the world.
There are several things you need to test to ensure your website not only works correctly but is user friendly. Many people create a great looking website using some of the most expensive web site editor, test it in their favourite browser and release it to the world, completely unaware that their website possesses a multitude of problems which could be determined by some simple testing, and fixed relatively easily. A good website will be quick to load, accessible to the vast majority of Internet users, and will be easily spiderable by the search engines.
Where do you start?
You need to start by asking yourself a couple of questions about your website. Firstly, what would a visitor to my website want to find? And secondly, have I made it so that it’s easy for the visitor to find what they want? Have you ever read something interesting on a particular website, and returned to that website later only to discover that you can’t remember where you found the information you’re after? It’s frustrating and annoying to spend several minutes searching for something that you know is there, but which you can’t find.
You want to design your website so that returning visitors aren’t frustrated by their inability to find information. It would be nice if there was a simple tool which could test this for you, but there aren’t any tools which can perfectly imitate human users, so your best bet is to recruit a couple of friends or people interested in the topic to have a look around your site, and give you feedback on your site’s navigability.
Test your site’s links
Now that you’ve dealt with the user-friendliness of your site it’s time to get down to the nitty gritty. Your first task will be to ensure that every link on your site goes where it’s supposed to, whether to another page on your site, or to another website.
One excellent tool for assessing your links is Xenu’s Link Sleuth , which quickly tells you which links on your site are broken. This application can be downloaded and installed on your computer (unfortunately it’s only compatible with Windows based machines, and it doesn’t appear likely that a version for Macs or other operating systems will be released).
There are excellent alternatives, however. One can be found at: http://validator.w3.org/checklink. It’s a good idea to regularly check your links using an application such as this, especially if you have many external links.
Test your site’s code
Once your internal and external linking is in order, it’s an excellent idea to test the validity of your code. One of the best places you can undertake a code validation is at http://validator.w3.org. You’ll know almost instantly if your html code has any errors. The good thing about this program is, it not only tells you whether or not your website validates, it also tells you exactly where any problems lie so they can be easily fixed. On the downside, this program only tests one page at a time, so using it for an entire website could quickly become very time consuming and tiresome. However, there are several programs which are able to test an entire website easily (see http://www.htmlvalidator.com and http://www.netmechanic.com); however, neither of these applications is free to use.
I have people asking me, if they must have web pages that validate. The short answer is - yes. The look of your web site is not all that matters. There’s one type of visitor to your site, probably the most important one, that won’t even notice your web site look and they are the search engines. Search engines look through your code to determine what your web site is about. And some code error can stop them on their tracks and they may end up only indexing “part” of your site, which will ultimately mean less chances of you being “found” through search engines.
Test your site’s load time
The next consideration when looking at your website is how long do your pages take to load? Many visitors will navigate away from a website which hasn’t loaded in a few seconds, and webmasters with high speed internet connections have to bear in mind that many visitors may still be using slow dialup modems. A simple tool which can quickly determine how fast your pages load can be found at http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze. Not only will you learn how fast your website loads at various connection speeds, you also get an analysis and recommendations. Remember that modern Internet users are impatient. The quicker your site loads, the more likely they’ll hang around.
Test your site’s accessibility
The next consideration is the accessibility of your website. Ideally, a website should be accessible to every Internet user, no matter what system they’re using, their screen size and resolution, their Internet connection speed or their browser of choice. Websites should also be accessible to people with disabilities, people who use screen readers, and people who access the Internet via their mobile phone or PDA.
We’ll start by determining accessibility for disabled users. One simple tool for analysing your site can be found at http://webxact.watchfire.com. Meeting appropriate standards of accessibility for disabled users can pose a challenge, so ideally this would be taken into consideration prior to creating your website. Nevertheless, a few simple changes may improve your website’s accessibility for those with special needs.
Test browser compatibility
Finally, you’ll want to consider how your website appears to those who choose to use browsers other than the standard Internet Explorer (which is used by about eighty percent of Internet users). One of the best resources for testing your browser accessibility can be found at http://browsershots.org. This application will take a screenshot of your website from 20 different browsers. It won’t give immediate results (it may take up to four hours to get results from each of the browsers tested), but will run whether or not you’re connected to the Internet once you’ve given it the URL you want tested (you can bookmark the results page and check it every so often).
Following these simple steps will help you ensure that your website is user friendly, easily accessible, and works exactly the way you planned it to.
