| Documents > Reports > Building industry (November 2000) |
| |
| Preliminary report |
| 9 websites scanned
- Date: November 7, 2000: |
PRELCO S.A.
- Jean Piasio S.A. - Rampini & Cie S.A. - Induni & Cie S.A.
- JACQUET S.A. - Conrad Zschokke S.A. -
P. Stoeckli & Cie - C.I.B. - Geneux Dancet S.A. |
| 1. General aspects: |
| 1.1. Search engine
visibility - Test: Yahoo, Altavista: |
Incredibly weak if you search
with building / Geneva or build / Geneva, whether in French
or in English; i.e. none of the above listed enterprises appears
on the first page of results?! Yet… by entering "building +
geneva", one accesses a unions' publication about the salaries
applied in the building industry (very interesting for potential
clients!), in addition to the yellow pages which display some
enterprises.
As stated in the Documents area,
only companies meeting specific conditions are selected for
our survey; other building enterprises did show on the first
page of results - through just a couple of combinations - thus
not considered in the following. |
| Research with the following combinations |
Altavista |
Yahoo |
+construction +genève
+construction +Genève
+construction +geneve
+construire +genève
+construire +Genève
+construire +geneve
+building +geneva
+building +Geneva
+build +geneva
+build +Geneva
|
1
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
|
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
|
|
| All pages included, these results
give an obvious idea of what efforts remain to be done accordingly
… |
| 1.2. Websites compatibility
with browsers: |
| This analysis will be performed upon request... |
2. Ease of download: |
Unable to analyze
6 websites not yet connected to the Internet age?!… we can then
consider the following 3 categories - percentages stand for
the number of slow downloading pages:
1. very slow: 86% 1 site
2. average: 50% 2 sites
3. "ultra quick": less than 10% 2 sites
We will further describe this aspect in Chapter 4. |
| 3. Ease of use: |
| 3.1. Broken links: |
As for the real estate
industry, we noted that the number of broken links is very low.
What does it mean? On the one hand - internally - that the sites
are well managed (regular checks and clean-ups), bringing to
a minimum the number of bugs which could occur while surfing
on a site (one good point!). On the other hand - externally
- it shows that these websites are not connected to others;
i.e. they are functioning like islands ignoring one another
- which is the exact opposite of the Web purpose - therefore
becoming invisible for the search engines which pick up sites
ONLY with regards to the number of links they have with other
sites having a similar content (e.g. Google).
Moreover, the most important argument is that broken links frustrate
your audiences/customers and make you look bad... |
| |
| 3.2. Attributes: |
An attribute consists
of tags (information) regarding the height, width and alt (alternative
text description for an object) of an image on a webpage. Adding
these tags decreases the time needed for a browser to render
a page when requested.
Furthermore, an alt tag (name) allows to reduces "further" surfing
difficulties; i.e. for even slightly disabled people or for
users with the 'image function' turned off.
Missing attributes average out at 40%, situation that could
be rather easily improved... Yet, if adding an alt tag is technically
VERY easy, think about the amount of patience needed when it
comes to searching for every single image over hundreds or thousands
of objects!!!...
Needless to say the more detailed a project is planned, the
less amendments to be made later... |
| 4. High quality
content: |
It is rather difficult
to make an overall comment. Nevertheless - as for the Ease of
download - we can distinguish 3 different categories:
1. advanced: these sites are fairly complete and take most of
the checklist criteria into consideration. It is rather easy
for the various target groups to collect the information they
need
2. average: having their own information scheme organization,
surfing becomes a little uneasy
3. beginners: only very little information is disclosed. |
| 5. Frequent updates: |
Generally speaking, 30% of the
pages are more than 4 months old… however, this ratio shows
a relative 'freshness of content', by reflecting the innovation
Internet implies for this industry, thus influencing its activities.
It does appear that the related enterprises have just entered
this new area, which could explain the 'newly wed' feeling we
have while surfing on their websites.
Besides, the software used to perform this analysis determines
the 'last modification date' by reading the header codes returned
by the server when a page is requested. So, websites setting
the 'date of the day' instead of the 'last modification date'
of a page render the test impossible; i.e. some pages might
be 'old' but they are not visible... we therefore cannot establish
which elements should be 'updated' on the related sites.
However, what should be kept in mind is that updated information
increases recurrent traffic, customer satisfaction and therefore
helps building trust! - in addition to the fact that old content
should be examined to ensure it is still relevant!?!... |
| |
Back to documents area
|
