Summary Site Report for http://www.ecademy.com/

This Summary Site-Report is for a popular UK networking organisation, ecademy.

URL: http://www.ecademy.com/
Date: Friday, November 8, 2003
Reviewer: James Saunders

1.0 Introduction

This Summary Site-Report identifies several possible problems with your web site.

These problems could relate to:

Web Site Usability
Web Site Accessibility
Web design and branding
Search engine optimisation

The problems identified within this report have been chosen from a larger number of issues found with the web site, are not exhaustive and are no necessarily presented in order of importance.

The report provides some assistance as to how each problem could be rectified. However, it is recommended that a full Site-Report is undertaken which will consist of a full review of your web site with recommendations for improvement. Further information is available at the end of the report.

The report does not cover the concepts or marketing of your site as these require much more time that we allow for this style of report.

2.0 Review Detail

Ecademy truly offers an incredible opportunity to members to network in a way that would be impossible without the site. For members it offers an incredible array of tools and features to enable business people to network. It also offers excellent co-promotional opportunities for businesses that would have been impossible to have achieved without considerable time and resources.

However, the complexity of the site is hindered rather than helped by usability issues. There are also some technical areas of concern that are affecting the site's search engine ranking and maintainability.

2.1 Search Engine Optimisation - Impediments

Your web site has 482 web pages listed in Google, 16218 in AllTheWeb and 5184 in Inktomi. The Google listings are a little concerning as it accounts for approximately 35% of all search engine traffic.

Ecademy has only a small percentage of its content listed in Google for one reason. It is breaking one of Google's main rules related to dynamically generated web sites, the 'no more than 2 data pairs rule' for a certain percentage of its pages. For example,

http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=club&op=forum&c=854&t=42075#endm

Google's rules for dynamic sites (which it will spider if the rules are followed) are:

Make sure each page has a different title
Make sure you don't include a session ID or anything that could be considered to be a session id as part of the query string
Use no more than 2 data pairs

For further related information, check out this article on search engine friendly dynamic web sites.

2.2 Search Engine Optimisation - Popularity and Placement

Link popularity is also a little low at only 780 pages listed in Google. Some of these pages are from ecademy's sister site, BeyondBricks.

As the title meta tag is the most important tag for Google, it is best to use it to gain the best search engine optimisation benefit for your web site.

Each URI within your web site should have a unique title and description including keywords that will assist search engine users (over 70% of web sites are found via search engines) find your web site.

The description of the reviewer's weblog () has the following description:

The use of quotes within the description meta tag is questionable.

A typical search term that could be used for your web site is "networking".

When this term was used, the following was found:

Alltheweb - No placement
AltaVista - No placement
AOL - No placement
Dmoz - No placement
Google/ AOL - No placement
HotBot/ Inktomi - No placement
Lycos Pro - No placement
MSN -No placement
Netscape - No placement
Teoma - No placement
WiseNut - No placement

This is due to "networking" listings being dominated by computer networking pages. Keeping this in mind, using the term "business networking" does better:

Alltheweb - No placement
AltaVista - Placement on page 2 for www.ecademy.com
AOL - Placement on page 2 for www.ecademy.com
Dmoz - No placement
Google/ AOL - Placement on page 2 for www.ecademy.com
HotBot/ Inktomi - Placement on page 2 for www.ecademy.com
Lycos Pro - No placement
MSN - No placement
Netscape - Placement on page 2 for www.ecademy.com
Teoma - Placement on page 2 for www.ecademy.com
WiseNut - No placement

More careful search engine optimisation should result in better placement within the top 10 search engines.

For further information regarding improving the search engine friendliness of your web site, check out our articles on How To Impress Search Engines and Users - Focus: Web Site Navigation and Simple Guidelines for effective search engine optimisation.

2.3 Web Site Design - Use of JavaScript

Your web site currently relies on JavaScript. The use of JavaScript isn't strictly necessary to the design of the web site. In fact, their use is potentially both alienating search engine spiders and visitors.

JavaScript is used on the site for dropdown navigation menu at the top of each page on the site menus. Approximately 10% of your web site visitors are likely to disable JavaScript. Therefore, this useful visual effect will not work for these visitors. However, the same effect can be achieved using Cascaded Style Sheets (CSS) and not alienate users.

Fortunately, click the main menu title opens up a page with a (slightly different) list of menu options that are both more descriptive and crawlable.

2.4 Web Site Design - Page download speeds

It is recommended that page downloads complete with no errors in under 15 seconds. The reason for this is that if it takes longer than 15 seconds, your web site visitors are likely to simply leave your site for another.

Don't forget, your competitors are just one click away.

Using a 56K modem under test conditions, it took 19 seconds to download the homepage. However, this was during a quiet time with only 6 members active on the site. Due to the data supporting the ecademy site being database-driven, it is anticipated that significant performance issues may result from 100 plus members and visitors on the site. This would lead to decreased performance which may result in lost visitors.

These performance issues can be resolved by:

reducing the number of database accesses on each page
caching data and serving static copies unless data has changed
gzip compression

If these, and other solutions are not being used, they should be investigated.

2.5 Web Site Design - HTML validation

Many browsers allow invalid HTML to be rendered. However, the use of invalid HTML may cause HTML to be rendered differently in different browser.

In order to make a web site as accessible as possible, it is recommended that it be validated against the W3C standards for HTML and CSS.

When validating the web site using the W3C HTML Validator (http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=www.ecademy.com), the home page fell at the first hurdle with the following

"I was not able to extract a character encoding labeling from any of the valid sources for such information. Without encoding information it is impossible to validate the document. The sources I tried are:

The HTTP Content-Type field.

The XML Declaration.

The HTML "META" element.

The problem could simply be rectified by adding one line of HTML:

2.6 Web Site Accessibility

Web site accessibility is becoming big news worldwide and all web designers should ensure that their web sites meet the accessibility standards that are coming into force.

Currently the ecademy web site fails on some of the most basic accessibility recommendations. The most obvious example is that of the alt-text associated with images.

The accessibility standards recommend that all images are given descriptive alt-text. This assists both visually impaired visitors using your web site in a text reader where the alt-text description associated with a web site is read out as well as visitors with slow dial-up connections as the alt-text is displayed during the image download and if the image fails to load.

In addition, it is recommended that:

<strong> is used instead of <b>.
descriptive link text is used (link your site here instead of link your site here).

For more information about accessibility, check out our article containing some simple guidelines for web site accessibility.

2.7 Web Site Design - HTML/CSS

The web pages make some use of CSS for presentation. However, there are some improvements that could be made to both the CSS and HTML.

In terms of the HTML, much of the page's markup is dominated by tabular structure HTML. In fact, on the weblog page of the reviewer, there are 34 nested tables. Much of the HTML would be invalid if converted to XHTML.

Examples include:

<a name="top"></A> - don't use caps for tags
<table width=100% border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 class="headermain"> - all attributes must be quoted
<iframe border=0 frameborder=0 width="468" height="60" SRC="ad2one.html" scrolling="no" ></iframe> - combination of the two

Although there are attempts to use CSS, maximum advantage has not been taken.

In every declaration of a table, the following has been used:

<table cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 border=0>

Using CSS, these attributes could be set on one place, the declaration of table.

Using CSS to reduce the amount of presentational markup has a number of benefits, these include:

reduced page sizes
easier maintenance
reduced bandwidth

All of these reduce costs. Less hosting space required, less support time maintaining the site and less money spent on bandwidth.

2.8 Usability analysis - Getting help

In this section, the reviewer takes on the role of a new member of the ecademy web site and attempts to perform a common task on the web site. The first task undertaken is to understand what ecademy is all about, its purpose and benefits.

"When I first open ecademy, I am bombarded with links. On the home page there seem to be hundreds. I'm not sure where to start."

Reviewer scrolls down the page trying to get a feel for what ecademy is all about. The mission is clearly stated under the photos but nothing else stands out.

"It's clear that I can read blogs, articles, latest news etc, but what's different about Ecademy?"

"Seen there are 44 members on board, it's clear that I'm not alone. I need help. OK. FAQ? No. Help? No. Getting Started? No. About? Yes. There's a link to help with the web site. Excellent"

"I'm a new user, I expect to see a new user guide. Instead the order is Events, Code Library, A guide to online networking at Ecademy. Seems a little strange to order things like that, but it looks like the link that I need is there"

The reviewer click the link and the page of links to "Getting started at Ecademy, tips on networking and 'Becoming a Power Networker" are there.

"The description for each article is pretty clear. I 'll start at "Getting Started at Ecademy". Oh blimey, some one's written a novel. I'll print that for later."

The Reviewer clicks Print Preview just to make sure that it's all going to fit on the page.

"7 pages. Why include the Logon box, the currently online list, the trusted networks, the ads and the What's New links in a printed page? The bit I want takes up about a 1/4 of the width of the page. There must be a print friendly version somewhere."

The reviewer clicks back through screens finding the print friendly version but doesn't find one.

"OK, I'll read it properly later. Or cut and paste the text into Word."

The reviewer clicks the home page link.

For more details of improving the usability of your web site, check out our articles on Advice on improving your web site, how usability can increase your ROI and Improving your web site's usability. To better understand what works and doesn't work, it is possible to gain some feedback from web logs and analytical software such as ClickTracks. Site-Report experts can also provide this analysis as part of our web site usability service.

2.9 Accessibility analysis - Don't make your site inaccessible to some visitors

A short time later in the session, the reviewer decides that he needs more information about Ecademy. The reviewer is using Opera 7 with Javascript disabled.

"Ah, animated tutorials. Sounds good. Broadband connection. Excellent."

The reviewer clicks the "View the animated tutorial" link. The page loads, take a while and the reviewer is presented with a blank pane with the Ecademy logo and the ad for 'Networking for Life'.

"Oh, another site that doesn't like Opera or needs Javascript. Didn't mention that I needed either".

It should be noted that when the tutorial is viewed in IE, it provides some invaluable information. However, it should be remembered that not every web user uses IE, has Javascript or allows popups.

For more information about accessibility, check out our article containing some simple guidelines for web site accessibility.

2.10 Usability - new member encounters problems

In this walkthrough, the reviewer wishes to write a web log message. From conversation, it's clear that the reviewer understands what a web log is and how popular they are.

"As a new member, I want to contribute. I have lots of good advice and want to share it. I've decided to write a web log message. As I do, I'll talk you through what I'm doing. I've logged in and am looking at the home page."

"Ok, seems logical to click the Weblog menu in the left pane"

The Reviewer clicks the link titled 'Weblog'.

"Hmmm, a blank screen apart for links to Full Text, Titles, Bloggers, and Search. OK, I expected to see a link saying 'New log message' there, I'll scroll down the page to see if there's anything down the bottom."

The Reviewer scrolls to the bottom of the page.

"Wow, lots of people are writing logs. Strangely their forenames all begin with A through M. Hate to be called Steve, otherwise I'd never show up! OK, still no link to create a new web log. There are navigation buttons, but I don't see the point in those. A right arrow whose alt text popup is Previous. Wierd! A First record arrow that says Top. An XML button. Bound to be handy once I've worked out how to add a web log!"

The Reviewer scrolls back up the page.

"Ah, the Post menu option. That could be it. Weblog. That sounds the business. Excellent. Found it! 'Web logs are typically relatively short pieces. ...' Relative to what?! Ha ha"

Asking real users to try simple tasks with your web site will provide invaluable feedback on how they manage the tasks. What appears to be obvious to the people that designed the site may be totally confusing to an everyday user.

Usability testing should be a key part of any web site development and should continue as revamps and new features are added to your site. These kind of tests can be undertaken in-house with a small number of testers, externally using a usabiliity testing company or virtually over the internet. Site-Report offers visitor-reviews that meet the objectives for usability testing.

3.0 A benefit to all ecademy members

We are currently offering Summary Site-Reports to all Ecademy members for less than £30. The Summary Site-Report covers all aspects of your web site including:

usability
accessibility
editorial content
web design and branding
internet marketing
ecommerce regulation compliance

The usual price of this style of report is £56.