eValid™ -- Automated Web Quality Solution Browser-Based, Client-Side, Functional Testing & Validation, Load & Performance Tuning, Page Timing, Website Analysis, and Rich Internet Application Monitoring.

Summary
This page defines some simple PASS/FAIL guidelines -- "rules of thumb" -- for use in analyzing websites based on eValid Site Analysis scans.

These guidelines are based on experience, and while they appear to be quite general there are, it is important to emphasize, no hard and fast actual rules.

Remember: Websites vary vastly in terms of content, intended purpose, type of content, link-dependence and internal structure, and response times. The safest judgements are made between two [or more] websites for which the eValid scans have been done with essentially the same settings.

• Broken Links
  If the broken/unavailable link count is above 1% of the pages, the user is SURE to have a bad experience. If the broken/unavailable link count is above 5% then you have a big problem.

  If there are broken/unavailable links having them as far as possible from the root node at least "minimizes the problem".

• Oops Pages
  Most website show you an "Oops Page: Sorry, the page you have asked for is unavailable", and that makes the user feel better. But if the total number of Oops Pages is more than 2% of the total page count, this is a negative. Also, too many Oops Pages implies poor site maintenance.

• Slow Pages
  This is an extension of the "three second rule": if 5% or more of the pages take more than 3 seconds to load, the user is SURE to have a bad experience.

• Page Size Exceeds 65 KBytes
  If more than perhaps 10% of the pages exeed 65 KBytes, very likely the website will be slow and the user is SURE to have a bad experience.

• Average Links Per Page
  The number of links out of a page is one measure of site complexity, and we have found that > 100 links per page appears to be a threshold that separates good from bad sites.

  But this doesn't apply to a site like www.cnn.com, on which high selectivity is a selling point.

• Page Size
  If pages are "too big" or "too small" there may be a problem. Between 10 KBytes and 75 KBytes is a good size. Too many pages outside this range suggest a problem.

• Old Pages
  If the average age of pages is > 180 days -- about six months -- the you probably are facing a site that is poorly maintained and/or not updated regularly.

• Wide Page Size Variation
  After removing images from the 3D-SiteMap, if the resulting picture shows widely varying page sizes, this may be a sign of structural or content inconsistency. The ideal site would have very few pages above or below the 25% threshold.