Website Testing and Evaluation FAQ

Click here to view the SiteTechnician Datasheet (pdf format).

Do I need a degree in computer science to understand my SiteTechnician website evaluation? Absolutely not. Unlike website analytics reports you may be familiar with--such as log file reports--the message is not obscured in cryptic data formats. SiteTechnician website evaluation is intended to provide the actionable intelligence business managers and webmasters need to make quick improvements to their websites. View our sample website evaluation reports to see how user-friendly they are.

How can I calculate the ROI of a "good visitor experience"? It costs 10 times more to attract and acquire a customer than to retain one. A heightened visitor experience translates into increased opportunities for sales, better customer relationships, and positive word of mouth. Visitors return more often; so, the average cost of customer acquisition declines. An investment in good visitor experience is also an investment in brand image recognition and brand protection. Comprehensive and consistent website testing is the key to enhancing the visitor experience.

Should I invest in visitor experience before investing in marketing? Don't put the cart before the horse. If your site is not optimized to provide a great user experience, don't spend money driving traffic to that site. Independent studies clearly show that a high percentage of new visitors abandon sites due to technical errors and poor website performance. And, a single bad experience tends to keep them away for good. Unless you can ensure a positive visitor experience first, you won't see the return on investment you expected from your promotion campaigns. In fact, an investment in site quality often leads to better returns. A study by Creative Good calculated that $1 spent on advertising yields less than $5 in incremental revenues, but $1 invested in creating a good visitor experience can yield over $60 in incremental revenues.

How often should my website be audited? As a rule of thumb, test your website at least as often as you update your site's content. This way, common problems are found and repaired before customers notice anything amiss.

I subscribe to WebTrends or Urchin. Don't these reports supply the same information? No. Traffic analysis tools like WebTrends and Urchin are complementary technologies that are useful for understanding where your visitors come from and how they behave on your site. However, they do not provide they type of usability and content analysis that SiteTechnician does. Using the two technologies can provide a powerful solution--your WebTrends report might indicate that a high percentage of your site's visitors are exiting your site from your "pricing" page, for instance. Webtrends cannot explain why they are exiting from that page. Could it be that your prices are too high? Or maybe there's a usability issue with that page. Your SiteTechnician website evaluation can help you better answer the "why" question. SiteTechnician could help you determine that visitors are exiting from your "pricing" page not because your prices are too high, but because that page takes too long to load, has accessibility problems, or contains broken links.

Can SiteTechnician audit my extranet, or secure areas of my site where a login is required?
No, not unless you wish to have those areas audited-in which case you will need to grant us that access privilege.

What web technologies does SiteTechnician support? SiteTechnician can evaluate any website, other than those constructed primarily in flash.

Don't DreamWeaver and other web development tools support many of the same website audits SiteTechnician performs? Yes, they can perform some of the same diagnostics, but only on a local site located on your hard drive. SiteTechnician performs its website evaluation on your remote site, located on the host machine that serves your site to the Internet. Website development tools are great for development, but website testing requires the types of specialized testing technology SiteTechnician employs.

Couldn't I perform most of these same website tests myself? You could find, evaluate, purchase and learn tools that would enable you to perform many of these same website evaluations yourself. You could also learn to do your own accounting - but you probably source that work to a specialist. Most organizations lack the resources (time and money) to perform the sophisticated website maintenance work SiteTechnician performs. In most cases, it's far more productive to outsource this work to SiteTechnician. You don't have to worry about purchasing and supporting new software-SiteTechnician's website evaluations provide the details you need, when you need them - without the overhead of managing the technology yourself.

Doesn't my web design agency perform this service for me? Web design agencies have expertise in web design. SiteTechnician's expertise is in website testing and diagnostics. They are different disciplines, and it is unlikely that your agency can provide the type of ongoing website evaluations that SiteTechnician can. If you are paying a monthly maintenance fee to your agency, then why does your website continue to have so many problems?

What technologies does SiteTechnician employ to audit my website?
SiteTechnician's automated technologies work much like search engine spiders - quickly traversing your site and identifying the usability issues that are damaging your visitors' experiences.