Critiquing others' sites?

timjpriebe's picture

He has: 2,667 posts

Joined: Dec 2004

Before you get all worried, I think this is in the right forum...

I'm often asked to critique others' websites, which I'm happy to do as a freebie. I am thinking about implementing some sort of formal scoring system.

One purpose this would serve would be the following. Ocassionally, I'm asked if I just take over webmastering a site, without redesigning. Well, I hate to do that on badly designed/engineered sites. A worksheet (or something) with a formal scoring system would let me give a score cut-off, and tell customers that if it's under that score, it has to be redesigned for me to webmaster it.

Plus, that would just help to make sure I don't forget to check all aspects of the site.

Has anyone done anything like this? Or, failing that, do you have ideas/suggestions for what to include on the worksheet? I was thinking 10 categories, each scoring on a scale of 1 to 10 with comments for the reason behind the score.

Renegade's picture

He has: 3,022 posts

Joined: Oct 2002

I think that a scoring system when scoring sites may work in some cases. In others, it would totally fail. Simply because when a person looks at a site, they "feel" and like/dislike different things about it because, just like art, critiquing a site is very subjective matter.

As scoring system maybe a good idea, but personally, I think it will fail in many cases. Mostly because "design" is subjective.

He has: 153 posts

Joined: Nov 2004

I think in your case it would be a great idea; in most cases I would tend to agree with Renagade because people will always rank sites different, different people like different things. In your case however YOU are the only one that really matters since you are the one that would be the webmaster.

I think I am going to do something like this as well for my business. It will be offered as a free service to intice people to use CTS to redesign their website. I will of course be 100% honest with all of my clients and will have at least 3 people provide input for the review.

I think we could benifit from designing something like this together. If your interested lets try to talk via e-mail, its a bit easier for me.

timjpriebe's picture

He has: 2,667 posts

Joined: Dec 2004

TaylorAtCTS wrote: I think we could benifit from designing something like this together. If your interested lets try to talk via e-mail, its a bit easier for me.

Sorry it took me so long to get back with you... I had to get with my partner first.

I'll shoot you an an email hopefully this evening when I get home.

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

In an ordinary case I would agree with the others but yours is a different circumstance. What you're doing is trying to find out if this is going to cause you a lot of headaches in the future. So you're going to be ranking more on a much less subjective scale. You're not evaluating the subjective aspect at all, but more the technical requirements and ease of updating and that sort of thing.

Come to think of it, I have seen something along these lines before, but more directed to webmasters. Let me google around...

Here's a good one:

http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/checklist.cfm

He has: 153 posts

Joined: Nov 2004

ok Smiling

I have some good ideas

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