Website healthcheck: How to evaluate the effectiveness of your website and benchmark it against your competitors.

Why do you need this course?

You know your website isn't perfect. You can spot issues that need resolution. Also, you get continual feedback from colleagues and customers. But you're lost in the detail of managing your site on a day-to-day basis. There's always something to be done, and it can be difficult to get the headspace and time to look objectively at your site to see what's working, what isn't, and what changes you need to make. All this means that analysing, improving and enhancing your site is sporadic at best, chaotic at worst. 

This workshop teaches you tried-and-trusted techniques for conducting a structured usability evaluation of your website. Applying these techniques, you'll be able to conduct regular healthchecks of your site, and identify, implement and manage site enhancements in a structured and efficient manner.

What we'll cover

We've been helping clients analyse and enhance their websites since 2000, and to date have evaluated more than 1,000 websites from all sectors. From this, we've learned a lot about what makes a website work, how best to evaluate websites, and how best to report and implement findings.

In this workshop, we distil all this experience to provide you with the skills and tools you need to become an expert website evaluator. Topics covered will include:

• What is an expert evaluation: pros and cons of the technique
• Understanding heuristics: best-practice guidelines for evaluating websites and applications
• Introducing the iQ heuristics: 50+ guidelines for your evaluating your website, covering key areas such as content, findability, visual design and ease-of-use
• How to conduct an expert evaluation
• To score or not to score: pros and cons of adding scores to your evaluation
• How to report and communicate your findings
• Benchmarking: using expert evaluation to monitor and benchmark your competitors or peers
• From analysis to implementation: creating a roadmap for website enhancements
• Common pitfalls and mistakes with expert evaluations, and how to avoid them

What you'll get out of it?

After attending this workshop, you will be able to:

• Conduct an expert evaluation of your website
• Apply best-practice principles to identify what's good and bad on your current site
• Document, report, and communicate your findings effectively
• Benchmark your site against your peers and competitors
• Create a roadmap for website enhancements