Web Audit

Nathan Johnson

Professor Dan Martin

ENC 4416

August 6, 2017

Rhetorical Web Audit

1. Introduction

I audited smarthouseofflorida.com, the website of a company that I used to work for. This company’s main form of advertisement is word of mouth and the site seems to have been created as an afterthought sometime in 2005 and then never touched again. This site has a serious lack of content, and what content it does have is poorly organized on the page. It is also in dire need of a design facelift. It’s a shame the site has so many problems because the company does good work and has an interesting product that I think many people would be interested in.

2. Methodology

I chose to do a strategic assessment of smarthouseofflorida.com. According to Halvorson a strategic assessment “gives you an idea of how your existing content aligns with” your strategy and answers “where are the gaps? What needs to change?” (53).  I chose this type of audit for several reasons. The first being that I because I am somewhat familiar with company I can identify gaps between the site is and where it should be. The second is that because there are so few pages a quantitative inventory did not seem like it would not return very usable results. I carefully examined every page, paragraph and sentence of the site from different viewpoints. I tried to put myself in the place of two distinct types of visitors to the site, a first-time visitor and an existing customer, and asked the questions they would ask. I tried to imagine what information they would come looking for and gauge how hard or difficult it was to find that information. I also viewed the site as someone familiar with the company and looked for content that was outdated, too vague or outright missing.

3. Summary of Findings

A first time visitor to the site would be hard pressed to determine what exactly it is that Smart House does. This is not because there is a large amount of content for the visitor to sift through; on the contrary the whole site only has nine total pages. Of those nine the “Information” page is an exact copy the home page. The home page though does not state what Smart House does. Instead there are vague statement such as “your partner in technology”, “built to a higher standard”, and “recognized by the Homebuilders Association as a leader in the field”. What that field is never directly stated, and there is

Smarthouseofflorida.com Home page

not a link to the Homebuilders Association. The “About Us” is not much better. Apparently Smart House is a “technology driven company” that was founded “with over 25 years experience [sic] in the complex arena of commercial and industrial controls, engineering, and project management.” Only the very last sentence “We are in a time of constant growth in home automation technology…” gives a hint as to what the company actually does, which is install and maintain home automation systems, home security systems and home theatre systems.

There is also a serious lack of information on the products that Smart House uses. There is a page called “Quality Products”, but it has no actual information on products that Smart House installs. Instead there are only has links to the websites of some companies whose products Smart House uses.

Product Page

 Admittedly this is a challenging task as the specific products installed are always changing as technology improves and are based on the needs of the customers. Still I think most prospective customers would like to know more about HAI than they are a “Home automation and security company”. They are probably interested in the features and capabilities of their most popular systems. Furthermore, some of the vendors on the product page do not have links to their websites.

Other pages also have incomplete information. The “Builder Associates” page is also missing links. As I mentioned earlier the “Information” page is copy of the “Home” page and offers no additional information. The community service page ends in an ellipsis. It states that Smart House donated to a charity and the “proceeds went to help…” but has no more information.

The site does some things well. It is easy to navigate and the page names make sense for the most part, although the content of the “Services” page would make more sense on the “Tips and Ideas” page. It does not have a search function, but with so little content one is not really needed. That said, the formatting of some of the pages leave something to be desired. There are large blocks of text without paragraph breaks and absolutely no titles or headers at all. The “Tips and Ideas” page has an unordered list with step-by-step instructions, where an ordered list would have made much more sense. The “Services” page is a lengthy list of things you can do with a Smart House system, but each item doesn't necessarily have any relation to the preceding or following items. This sort of cluttered formatting makes it hard to find specific information on a page.

The whole overall look and design of the website is very outdated. The color scheme and thin, sans-serif font make the site unpleasant to look at. Some of the art assets are just early 2000s clip art. The color scheme is very drab with a dark gray and olive background. There are missing pictures and the art assets are outdated. There is a column of company logos that are all varied sizes and that don’t line up with each other. In addition to those issues the text formatting is not consistent across the entire site. There are also a couple of pages where the text butts up against the left side of the center section. This is visually unappealing and makes the text harder to read.

About Us

4. Analysis of Findings

There is simply not enough information on this site to really be useful to any visitor. A prospective customer would not be able to get a sense of what the company does, nor if they are skilled at it. Nielsen states that “If the homepage fails to clearly state what a company offers and what users can do on the site” then the visitors will leave. One of the major products that Smart House sells is a home automation system, but home automation is only mentioned once on the entire site. What information that is present is not particularly useful. In short, there is little reason for visitors to ever come back to this site after their first visit.

The pages themselves also need some work to reorganized and restructure the content on them. There are several long paragraphs and lists that are hard to read and hard to pull useful information out of. These need to be broken up and each section needs to be given a heading. After that each section needs to be expanded on to fully cover the topic.

Another issue that the site has is that it is not visually appealing. A company that installs high tech home automation systems should have a site that wows visitors, not make them feel like they traveled back in time. This site needs more images, more color, maybe some animated elements. It needs a little flair.

5. Recommendations

I think focusing on adding some information about what the company does would go a long way in improving the site. The home page should explicitly state that the company installs home automation and security systems. Since one purpose of this site is attract new customers it should show off projects the company has done in the past. Some examples of previous projects would especially help visitors gain an idea of what the company is capable of. Images and videos would add some visual appeal to the website and make the systems more tangible. The site should also at least list the specific products that they typically use. Savvy tech users are used to being able to research every potential purchase on the internet and will be less inclined to shell out cash if they cannot find out exactly what they would be getting. An interactive system configurator, while a lot of work to implement, would be a great way to lay a seed of interest in visitor’s minds. For existing customers, I would add business hours, warranty information, and a description of the level of service they can expect to get to the “Services” page, and fix the support request form.

An update of the visuals to modern design standards would also go a long way to making the site more attractive. What “innovative state-of-the-art technology company” has a website that has not been updated since 2005? I would do away with the black-and-tan color scheme for something lighter in color. All the broken images either need to be fixed or removed. One of the first steps I would take would to be make all the images of logos on the right side of the page the same size. Right now, that part of the site looks very sloppy and unprofessional. I would get rid of the clip art-esque art assets that currently serve as the center piece of the site.

There is a lot that could be done to improve readability and visitor’s ability to quickly find the information they are looking for. The first time would be to change the font to something thicker and with more space between lines. I would also add headings and subheadings where needed. The “Services” and “Tips and Ideas” pages could be broken up and organized with a couple of headings that would make them much more readable and usable. Some specific actions I would take to existing content is to put the information in the first paragraph on the “Tips and Ideas” page into bullet points. There is not a single cohesive idea that ties that paragraph together. Rather it is a series of tips for living with various systems. I would also split the “Tips and Ideas” page into two pages and move the content from the “Services” page to the new “Ideas” page. Rewriting the website with CSS would take care of the other formatting issues with the site.

I believe the website should also be completely rewritten to use HTML5 and CSS. HTML5 tags and best practices are designed to make a website as accessible to all user as possible and to have better compatibility with all browser. CSS gives coders much more control over formatting, not only allowing them to make more attractive sites, but to also make them more responsive. This means that a site remains usable and attractive no matter device the visitor is using to access it.

Works Cited

Halvorson, Kristina, and Melissa Rach. Content strategy: for the web. Berkeley, CA: New Riders, 2012. Print.

“Nielsen Norman Group.” Usability 101: Introduction to Usability, www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-to-usability/.