The Delicate Art of the Website Critique

June 9, 2007

I’ve been asked to reflect on the redesigned United Church of Christ (UCC) website. What’s a church web diva to do? I could take the sledgehammer approach, like the endlessly astonishing Web Pages That Suck. Or I could do as my mother taught me – if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.

In between… hmmm…. I’ve been channeling Emily Post, and it seems to me that having a process is the key. Come to think of it, it might help others in the fine art of assessing a website.

When I critique a site, I invariably look first at three things:

1. The quality of the code.
2. The architecture, in particular the navigation.
3. The look-and-feel.

If I can get past these three, then I evaluate what’s ultimately most important – the content.

So how does the UCC site measure up?

1. Peeking under hood, the code is not accessible and it does not validate. It doesn’t even have a doctype. Yikes! It’s a virtual certainty it will break cross platform and cross media. It’s not extensible, so it’s going to be particularly difficult to adapt for the future. Think the iPhone.
2. From a quick look at the architecture, I’d say the search engine is good, but the rest needs an overhaul. The use of Flash for navigation seems wrong for a site like this. [For more on this, see the update below.] Also, I don’t understand most of the labels in the primary navigation, and the parts of speech used are inconsistent. Then on secondary pages, I don’t see an obvious way to get back home.
3. Look-and-feel is the most dicey to assess. Me – I like the curves and simple palette, but continuous animation on the home page is off-putting. I love Flash, but even I don’t get why so many sites make this same mistake over and over again. See, for example, the recent bru-ha-ha about the 2012 Olympic site, which reportedly triggered epileptic seizures.
4. The content, I suspect, is excellent, but since I couldn’t get past the first three, nor do I belong to the UCC, that’s only a fuzzy sense.

In the end, what matters most is how well the site works for its primary audiences. In other words, how usable is it? When usability tests are well done, the results are invisible. When poorly done or not done at all, users trip — the site breaks in their browser, they can’t find what they are looking for and so on.

The UCC leadership clearly cares about their web presence, and they have a wealth of information and resources to share. If they asked me what to do, I would say run as fast as you can to hire a well-regarded website shop. Look for one that is solidly rooted in accessibility, standards and usability, e.g. Happy Cog Studios. Work with them first on a short-term coding band-aide, and then develop guidelines and procedures, rebuilding the site with an eye to the future.

Note: as this little post goes to press, I see the UCC home page has changed, now offering a choice for low vs. high bandwidth users. I guess it’s a band-aide, but I fear it’s the wrong one. At least, though, they are trying to get off the merry-go-round of poor code. Godspeed.

6/10 Updates: A quick clarification – it was the Rev. Scott Wells who requested my thoughts on this redesign. For those who are having problems accessing it, you might want to try some of Scott’s browser adjustment suggestions.

Also, the navigation issue which I had thought caused by Flash, Bill Siddall clarifies is caused by the Flash and menu animation competing for CPU cycles.

Posted in: Religious Websites