Some of the UK’s top blue chips companies are performing badly online, with over 70 per cent of their web pages failing code standards. And if the biggest businesses in the country with large budgets can get their internet presence wrong, are small to micro-sized companies faring any better?
A survey of FTSE 100 company web sites by analysts, SiteMorse has revealed a whopping 7,590 functional failures or site errors. Encouragingly, only 0.69 per cent of pages contained missing page titles.
But a particular area for concern is accessibility. Just under 17 per cent of the surveyed sites failed to comply with level A accessibility, but 91.6 per cent failed level AA accessibility standards. Three sites failed accessibility A and AA on every page.
The SiteMorse monthly FTSE web site surveys now also examine Adobe PDF files against 28 benchmarks including broken hyperlinks, email address failure and accessibility. Performance here was very bad. An astonishing 80 per cent of PDFs failed accessibility testing.
While accessibility and poor coding on web pages are relatively well-known issues, it would appear that PDFs are catching even the largest high street names off guard. Time now, perhaps, for all web site owners to take a closer look at their PDF files.
To be fair, Adobe PDF files are not always accessible to users with disabilities. However, the format does provide features which enable document authors to ensure that their PDF documents are accessible to all, by including a “tag” within the file indicating the logical document structure and reading order.
Of course, prevention is better than cure. And undoubtedly a lot cheaper in the long run if it prevents lost sales. Site testing with real people before launching is the preferred option in order to uncover bugs that may not be immediately apparent until users are let loose on a site.
A group of about 10 people to broadly represent your target audience should be sufficient to generate useful feedback. Just remember to factor in some time to address the problems raised by testers.
