QA For Web Sites: Benchmarking Web Sites

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QA For Web SitesBenchmarking Web Sites
http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/qa-focus/presentations/ili-
2004/
Talk 3

• Brian Kelly
• UKOLN
• University of Bath
• Bath

Email B.Kelly_at_ukoln.ac.uk
UKOLN is supported by
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What Is Benchmarking?

• Benchmarking is about
• Sharing
• Learning from best practices
• Learning from mistakes others have made
• Note that in this benchmarking example
• We dont intend to have league tables
• No prizes for the best
• We should recognise that
• Organisations have differing priorities
• Organisations have different levels of resources
• Organisations have different starting points
• Organisations have differing organisational
  politics

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About Web Benchmarking

• A wide range of benchmarking exercises have been
  carried out which
• Help to compare Web site with your peers
• Identify common problems
• Help prioritise solutions
• Help to learn from best practices
• Spot trends

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Benchmarking Exercises
H
http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/qa-focus/toolkit/web-01/

• We will now use the QA Focus Web toolkit to check
  your Web sites for compliance with
• HTML CSS standards
• Accessibility guidelines
• Link errors

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Search Engines

• Benchmarking can also be used to discover the
  approaches taken in providing services across
  related services.
• For example a survey of search engines used on
  University Web sites shows that ht//Dig is the
  safe solution. Monitoring trends shows that
  Google is growing in popularity

This information can be used to establish
communities of practice
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404 Pages

• Does your 404 error page
• Use your institutions branding (logo, colour
  scheme, etc)
• Provide a navigation bar to help the post user
• Contain access to search facilities
• Benchmarking surveys can help find examples of
  best practices

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Conclusions

• Benchmarking
• Allows you to make comparisons between your Web
  sites and your peers
• Helps to spot examples of best practice which
  you can seek to emulate
• Helps to spot mistakes and errors which you can
  seek to avoid

Are there other areas in which benchmarking may
be useful?
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Accompanying Resources

• Search Facilities
• Search Facilities For Your Web Site, QA Focus,
  Briefing Document No. 8
• 404 Pages
• 404 Error Pages On Web Sites, QA Focus, Briefing
  Document No. 6