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.
References 2checkout. (2017, 11 11). Choosing the Right Colors for Your Web Site. Retrieved from 2checkout:
http://www.avangate.com/avangate-resources/article/color-web-site.htm
Alibaba.com. (2017, 10 16). Alibaba - Categories. Retrieved from Alibaba: https://alibaba.com
Ansomat. (2017, 10 16). Ansomat - Home. Retrieved from Ansomat: www.ansomat.co
Bigby, G. (2016, 11 10). How to Structure Your Website for Search Engine Optimization. Retrieved
from Dyno Mapper: https://dynomapper.com/blog/21-sitemaps-and-seo/250-how-to-
structure-your-website-for-seo
Business Insider Inc. (2017, 10 16). Tech. Retrieved from Business Insider UK:
http://uk.businessinsider.com/tech?r=US&IR=T
Business Insider Inc. (2017, 11 12). UK Business Insider - Home. Retrieved from UK Business Insider:
http://uk.businessinsider.com/?r=UK&IR=T
Common Places. (2017, 11 12). 10 Tips for Building a User-Friendly Website. Retrieved from Common
Places: http://www.commonplaces.com/blog/10-tips-for-building-a-user-friendly-website/
Eat Your Kimchi. (2017, 10 16). Latest Videos. Retrieved from Eat Your Kimchi:
http://www.eatyourkimchi.com/
Federale Overheidsdienst Financiën. (2017, 10 16). Federale Overheidsdienst Financiën - Home.
Retrieved from Federale Overheidsdienst Financiën: https://financien.belgium.be/nl
Horeca Vlaanderen. (2017, 10 16). Horeca Vlaanderen - Home. Retrieved from Horeca Vlaanderen:
www.horecavlaanderen.be/home
Jeremy Dotson. (2017, 11 8). Security. Retrieved from Biz Tech Magazine:
https://biztechmagazine.com/article/2007/07/http-vs-https
KBR Systems. (2017, 10 16). Ruiterschool Rodeberg - Home. Retrieved from Ruiterschool Rodeberg:
www.ruiterschoolrodeberg.be
Luysterborg Linguistics. (2017, 10 16). Luysterborg Linguistics - Home. Retrieved from Luysterborg
Linguistics: http://www.luysterborg.eu/index.html
Mediahuis. (2017, 10 16). De Standaard. Retrieved from De Standaard: www.standaard.be
Microsoft. (2017, 10 16). MSN - Home. Retrieved from MSN: www.msn.com/nl-be
Miller, C. R. (2017, 11 12). Why users leave a website. Retrieved from Crazy Egg:
https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/why-users-leave-a-website/
Sanoma Digital The Netherlands B.V. NU. (2017, 10 16). Voorpagina. Retrieved from Nu Nl: nu.nl
Singapore Tourism Board. (2017, 10 16). Passion Made Possible. Retrieved from Visit Singapore:
http://www.visitsingapore.com/en/
Under30CEO. (2017). 7 Tips to Using Alibaba Correctly So You Don’t Get Scammed. Retrieved from
Under 30 CEO: http://under30ceo.com/7-ways-to-get-scammed-on-alibaba/
University of Wisconsin - Green Bay. (2017, 11 10). Computing & Information Technology - How can I
tell if a website is credible? Retrieved from University of Wisconsin - Green Bay:
https://uknowit.uwgb.edu/page.php?id=30276
Who Is Hosting This? (2017, 11 10). How to search and determine credible sources on the internet.
Retrieved from Who Is Hosting This?:
https://www.whoishostingthis.com/resources/credible-sources/