Web Site Checklist

1. Branding

Components (a name, text, visual graphics and/or sound) used to signify a company and distinguish it from its competitors. A brand is comprehended by the viewer on an emotional level

• Is the brand well defined on your site?
• Is the site branding consistent with branding in other media such a brochures, business cards, flyers, news paper advertisements, letter head television or radio adds?

2. Architecture

The site's structure, what are the main sections and how are they organized into sub sections and pages. Also the underlying framework, code and programming

• Are any areas on the site deeper than 5 clicks?
• Does the site structure flow logically from one topic to the next?
• Are the naming conventions coherent from a User's perspective
• Do old java menu still work?
• Is your HTML, CSS, JavaScript and XHTML up to standard coding techniques?
• Is your web site designed for proper monitor resolutions and the correct user audience?

3. Navigation

The Interface that allows the User to travel through the site.

• Is the navigation comprehendible, intuitive, relevant and consistent on all areas of the site?
• Is it fast and easy to navigate from page to page within the site and to find the information you need?
• Is it easy to figure out where you are within the site?
• Can visitors access the homepage, e-mail and contact information from every page?
• Are all the links properly functioning?

4. Graphical Design (User Interface)

The "look and feel" of the site

• Do the colors used, page layout, typography, photos and graphics complement your brand and are they consistent and creatively placed within the web site?
• Are the colors used for links, backgrounds and navigation harmonious and web safe
• Does your browser work in Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Safari, Mozilla, FireFox and on a PC and Mac computer?

5. Content

The information contained in the site: text, images and animations.

• Does every page has meaningful, concise content and clearly articulates concepts?
• Does the usefulness and quality of content inspires users to return?
• Do you update content frequently providing value and updated resources?
• Is the text grammatically correct and free of typos?
• Are the images current, bright, clear and optimized for the web?

6. Function

Does your web site accomplish the goals you want it to?

• Could it be working better?

7. E-mail

Is your e-mail spam filtered?

• Do you gets lots of spam
• Is your web site built with technology to hide your e-mail addresses from bots, crawlers and gofers that harvest your e-mail?

8. Marketing and Promotion

The ability to have your web site found and ranked well in the search engines and directories, successful email campaigns and related print materials.

• Is your web site search engine optimized?
• Has you site been submitted to the search engines monthly?
• Are you pages optimized for current and relevant key work terms?
• Are you Meta tags out of date?
• Are you competitors starting to creep up to you in the search engines or have you started falling in the search engines or been lost altogether?
• Have e-mails and phone calls from the site slowed down or stopped?
• Have your unique visitors per day been declining?
• Do you have Flash for you home page or a completely flash web site?
• Is you web site mainly graphics which can not be indexed by a search engine?
• Has a company performed illegal search engine ranking techniques and had you banned from the search engines.
• Do you have an independent IP address

9. Hosting

• Does your web page appear quickly?
• Does your server crash often?
• Does your email stop working often?
• Do users complain that your web site is not available?