Website quality can be difficult to judge objectively. Everyone has an opinion and different preferences. New trends in things you can do with your website come and go. Knowing the things that make an ongoing and significant difference to your users is what makes an expert reviewer like e-Biz Watch.

The other unique side of expert assessment is the ability to benchmark against the websites of comparable companies. This is a kind of competitive analysis letting you know what you are doing better or worse than others – to fix up weaknesses or capitalise on strengths.

Gaining a complete picture of where a website stands and how it could be improved is often not bothered with by business owners. But those who want to do some serious business online will cover the key elements of performance monitoring so they can manage ongoing optimisation in a targeted way. Most companies have usage reporting as standard.

Google Analytics has taken off and provides fantastic transparency to the key attributes for measurement especially rates of conversion toward desired user behaviour like purchasing or contacting you. Search optimisation and online promotion and marketing are moving ahead well with a good range of advice for DIY and specialists available for external advice.

However the critical part of what to do about improving the quality of the site is often not professionally handled. It is usually left up to occasional conversations between web developer reps and the manager responsible and typically follows a ‘that sounds good, give us a quote’ approach. There is often no reference to best practices for similar websites and aspects annoying to users get overlooked, sometimes for years.

Rough spots in the users’ flow through the site accumulate and users pull back on doing what you would like them to do. Despite some good or even great content these potholes undermine the whole online experience for too many. An independent expert assessment has no vested interest in the site’s history and so can provide clean, unbiased advice that champions the interests of users.

Check out our assessment options to see the kinds of possibilities that will reveal new opportunities for your site to improve.

Play up to double or nothing with our assessment fee: if we can’t find 50 problems in your website that you agree are significant or meaningful to your users then you get it either for free or much cheaper depending on your confidence in your website’s current quality. And vice versa, if we do find 50 agreed problems then you pay us up to double.

We’ll even let you choose how much you want to stake based on how confident you are about your website’s current quality. How great is it?

The challenge is based upon our Full Best Practices Assessment and Priorities & Advice Report, at a standard price of $4,000 + gst. This assessment covers over 300 best practices criteria in the areas of usability, products & services, company information, sales and / or distribution, sales support or other content, industry integration, search readiness, accessibility, and personalisation. Each of the criteria is rated from 0 to 10 and commented if there is a shortfall from best practice. Your site will be compared with other business websites across each criteria area as well as overall. The priorities and actions report highlights the top 50 issues found, describes their implications to users and suggests remedial action.

Challenge Process

1. You accept challenge and select a confidence level to set the agreed stakes.
2. We review your website and provide you with the assessment and 50 priorities report within one week.
3. You have a week to review the findings (with your web developer if you choose) and challenge any issues that you do not believe are significant or meaningful for your users, or if you accept we have succeeded we’ll invoice you for the agreed Success fee.
4. If there are issues for relitigation we get one further week to suggest further issues to top up any thrown out.
5. You may challenge again the top-up issues or agree.
6. If we are short, we’ll agree to invoice you at the agreed Fail fee.
7. If we disagree with some of your challenges we reserve the right to seek the views of an independent arbiter (that we both agree on), such as a usability consultant or other web practitioner we who will discern the fairness of the disputed problem’s significance or meaning to your users (at our cost). We both agree to abide by the decision of the arbiter and so the agreed fee.

Challenge Rules

1. You do not get to see the evaluation criteria before the challenge begins.
2. The site must be reliably available for more than 95% of the working week before delivery of the assessment and report.
3. This is a genuine fun challenge to demonstrate our credibility while with money at stake is done in good faith by both sides.

Do you take up the e-Biz Watch ‘Our Website is Good Enough’ Challenge?

Please contact me with your answer.

Shane Middlemiss
Chief Assessor
Ph 07 552 0031 Cell: 027 248 9406
shane@e-bizwatch.co.nz