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Posted at 11:13 AM PT, Apr 7, 1999
A new service launched this week rates Web site usability and performance from an end-user perspective.

WebCriteria SiteProfile uses agents to read the equivalent of 10 browsing hours (or 50MB) of information about a Web site and then takes that information -- as well as the same information from two competitors' sites the user selects -- and delivers reports based on the site's load times, accessibility, freshness, and composition.

According to Web usability guru Mark Hurst, the product solves one part of the usability issue, which is having the data. The important next step is then using that data to improve the site, he said.

"There's a definite advantage to having software tools that generate quantitative data about a site," said Hurst, founder and president of Creative Good, in New York. "But quantitative data by itself doesn't improve the customer experience. You still need a person or a team to use that data appropriately."

The service uses a browser-based agent, called Max, to simulate the behavior of a user visiting the site. Max is programmed with characteristics and behaviors meant to simulate the way a typical user interacts with a Web site. In comparing different sites, Max also computes how long it takes to get from one point to another similar point on all three sites.

The agent does not go by file size, but rather how long it would take for someone to read the text on a given page.

"This is a best-case scenario," said Alistair Williamson, CEO of WebCriteria. "It's probably going to take longer."

The company also plans to offer versions of Max tuned to different demographics in the future, a quarterly newsletter discussing Web usability, a tool for people to gauge their sites based on certain usability criteria and software to visually model a Web site in three dimensions.

Pricing for the service comes in three flavors: a single report costs $495; four reports within a 12-month period cost $1195; and 10 reports over the course of one year cost $1950.

WebCriteria Inc., in Portland, Ore. can be reached at www.webcriteria.com.

Jeff Walsh is an InfoWorld senior writer.