Getting what you need or want can be a little bit trickier than might expected especially if you're not an web insider. Often I see web sites that when displayed with a different browser than Internet Explorer are failing badly. Text and images are missing their places like a incomplete puzzle.
So who's to be blamed ? It's the designer's fault. The owner usually doesn't have any idea how to check or what to check on his web site. But again, he hired a "professional" and there is the result.
So how do we check the quality of the web site ?
Well, first of all, you have to get to the page and, trust me, is very annoying when you find something that looks promising on Google only to get to a broken link when you click on it. So make sure that all your links are working and they are taking you to the correct page.
OK. You loaded the page. Make sure that the page displays correctly. Images and flash objects are loading, correct page titles, grammar and spelling and all the elements on the page are not falling apart. And use more than one browser for this.
Another thing that equally important is the HTML meta tags. You will find these in the tags of your site's source code (CTRL+U in Firefox Mozilla will display the source code). Check that "keywords" and "description" tags are set and they have the right content. These two (along with other things) are important if you want to be ranked high in search engines.
You should also check the size of the page. It is not so important if you have a fast Internet connection, but unfortunately not everyone is that blessed so kipping the page as lite as possible is always a good policy (no more than 100-200 KB text - css, javascript and html files - and images).
If the web site contains forms you should check if they are processed correctly. Check for security checks. For example insert a wrong email address in the email field. By wrong I mean something like this: my@name@yahoo.com. Than press the submit button. If the site doesn't complain (by prompting the form again and displaying a message) than it has a problem. Huge one. Check other fields to. Insert letters where should be accepted only digits and so on. Or submit an empty form.
These security checks are quite important.
Another important thing is what happens when a wrong / inexistent address is given. If the website gives an error or displays a "not found" message things can be improved. Make sure that if an address doesn't exist or can not be served/displayed a friendlier than "not found" page is displayed. Instructions are even better.
Than make sure your shielded against SQL injection, Javascript injection, and stuff like XSS, session fixation and others. Google for "websites security problems" and read more about it.
Another hot issue is data protection and privacy. Once the user data is stored in your database is your business to keep it safe and private. Otherwise one or more lawsuits are right behind the corner.
And check if web standards are met. You can check it here (just fill in your site's URL in the field on that page).
But enough with the technical stuff. After all the technical things are OK you should measure another couple of things.
First one is how many unique visitors per day your site has. This basically means how many persons are visiting your site every day (not how many pages are loaded). It will help you build some aggregate data.
The next is user route through your web site. This will tell what majority of the people are doing on your web site. Where are they going from the home or any other page. This info will let you optimize the content of the pages where is needed.
Page popularity (other than homepage). Well, this one kind of... speaks for its self. You must wanna know which are the most popular pages on your web site and also which are the least popular.
Errors and failures. You'll need this to eliminate any errors that occur during an user's visit.
So these are the aspects that you should look after and remember to ask for assistance when needed.
Quality control
published on 07/06/2010