Website Design & Benchmarking
Instructions
Bachelor Students are to write an individual essay of minimum 2000 and maximum 3000 words.
Assignment
You are to write a report based on the analysis you have done.
Part 1
Write a report on your website explaining the following;
1. The business model.
2. The reason behind the selection of the theme used or the structure used to develop the site.
3. Explain the rationale behind the site structure and page design.
4. Explain how your information was structured and the underlying principle/s that informed this choice.
5. Explain the different navigational options you have on your site.
6. An explanation as to whether your site is ready (or not ready) to be published.
Part 2
A comparative website analysis, using a case study of the following organizations websites.
www.foxnews.com/
www.cnn.com/
www.msnbc.com/
Details of the analysis
What to analyze: (Compare and contrast in detail the differences between the websites on the following criteria. I some cases only the home page is relevant)
The global rank in terms of traffic to and from the website
The Country rank in terms of traffic to and from the website
The category rank in terms of traffic to and from the website
Total traffic to the website
– Average duration
– Pages visited
Traffic by country Showing only the top 3 countries.
A breakdown of the traffic sources
Specify the Rating for organic key words
State the figure for organic Traffic
Specify the organic traffic value in dollar terms
State top SEO Pages, by country
Specify the Google speed score
State the page load time
List the first 3 performance improvement options as well as the level of performance.
Below are some websites that you can use to carry out the above analysis
https://www.similarweb.com/home
https://neilpatel.com/
http://www.uptrends.com (Select free tools)
https://tools.pingdom.com/
https://comparium.app/
Part 3 Use the same websites above to do the following analysis
Home page. How informative is the home page? Does it set the proper context for visitors? Is it just an annoying splashy page with multimedia?
Navigation. Do the sites have global and local navigation elements? If they do is it consistent from page to page? Do major sections have local navigation? Is it consistent?
Site organization. Is the site organization intuitive and easy to understand?
Links and labels. Are labels on section headers and content groupings easy to understand? Are links easy to distinguish from each other? Or are they ambiguous and uninformative (“click here” or “white paper”)? Are links spread out in documents, or gathered conveniently in sidebars or other groupings?
Search and search results. Is the search engine easy to use? Are there basic and advanced search functions? What about search results? Are they organized and easy to understand? Do they give relevance weightings or provide context? Do the search results remind you what you searched for?
Readability. Is the font easy to read? Are line lengths acceptable? Is the site easy to scan, with chunked information, or is it just solid blocks of text?
Content. Is their sufficient depth and breadth of content offerings? Does the content seem to match the mission of the organization and the needs of the audience? Is the site developing its own content or syndicating other sources? Is there a good mix of in-depth material (detailed case studies, articles, and white papers) versus superficial content (press releases, marketing copy)?
Provide a rating for each question on each site visited: 1=bad, 2=poor, 3=fair, 4=good, 5=outstanding. Naturally, you may want to adjust this scale to fit your needs, but it is important to have some kind of scale to make the job of comparison easier.
Conducting the analysis
Now that you have the sites to visit and a list of criteria to compare, start your analysis. Be sure to conduct your analysis with some rigor. Don’t be haphazard, and don’t do things differently with each site visit. Try to analyze a site without interruption. In other words, do everything you can to reduce bias in your investigation.
Here are some additional guidelines:
1. Visit one site at a time, and take the same (or at least, similar) paths through each site. Follow the checklist of criteria.
2. For each criterion, take notes. You’ll refer to these notes when you organize and write your report.
Include the information below in your analysis report.
Try to give a score for each criterion as you complete them. That way you’ll have scores for each major category as well as for each site.
When you’re ready you’ll need to do some simple statistics, there are at minimum, a handful of important calculations to make for each site:
Mean: The mean is derived by adding all values in a set and dividing by the number of items in the set. For example, in a data set comprising scores of 3, 4, 4, 5, 3, 2, and 5, the mean would be 26 / 7, or 3.72.
Median: The median is derived by lining up all values in a data set from smallest to largest and picking the one that’s right in the middle. To continue our example, in a data set comprising values of 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, and 5, the median would be 3.5 (with an odd number of values, split the two around the middle). Some feel that the median is a better representation of an “average” score, but I think that using both the mean and the median give you a better overall picture.
Mode: The mode is derived by calculating the highest frequency value in a data set. In our example data set, the mode would be 4 (there are more 4s than any other value).
Maximum, minimum, and spread: The maximum value in a data set is the largest value, and the minimum value is the smallest. The spread is the difference between these two values. To complete our example, the minimum value is 2, the maximum value is 5, and the spread is 3.
Together, these values (mean, median, mode, maximum value, minimum value, and spread) start to tell a story. They don’t tell the whole story, but they certainly illustrate and make plain the results of your work. For example, Web sites that have means and medians that are far apart indicate more weight on extreme ends of the scale (either more 1s or 5s in the established rating system). Mode values that are significantly different from medians and/or means also indicate clumping of values away from the normal, expected curve. Web sites with large spreads between minimum and maximum values might indicate a high level of inconsistency in the different portions of the site; in other words, a site might have poor search functionality but excellent content organization and site navigation.
You need to remember that the numbers you assign to any part of a Web site are partly arbitrary as some bias will enter the process e.g. you might be in a hurry or be under some other pressure which may distracting you, or your mind may wander while you’re finishing an evaluation.
Be as fair as you possibly can and make it clear that the numbers you assign are subjective scores, and this is not an exact science. You are using them primarily to have something quantifiable to point to and discuss, instead of just guesses and raw opinion.
You can perform calculations manually or with a spreadsheet. Excel and other spreadsheet tools provide built-in functions for calculating means, medians, modes, and other statistical values.
Format instructions:
Font type: Times New Roman
Font size: 12 for the main body with exceptions for the Title page and the Headings if any. All pages should be numbered consecutively.
Word limit: Between 2000 to 3000 words excluding title page, references and appendices.
All citation must be in Harvard referencing style and format. The student can use this link for the online guidance on the application of Harvard formatting and citation style https://library.aru.ac.uk/referencing/harvard.htm?h
English UK
Criteria of Assignment
1. Ability to present an in-depth knowledge and understanding of key concepts and theories
2. Ability to apply critical analysis and synthesis of relevant information and theory
3. Ability to demonstrate innovative and creative thinking through the analysis and evaluation of material
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