Topic: Perfect website formula found

[Clive]

The formula for the perfect website has been found by a study commissioned by Rackspace, a website hosting company.

According to the research, the key aspect of a website for surfers is ease of navigation, with 83 per cent of respondents in a survey of 2,500 people chosing this as the most important factor. Other areas crucial to the user's experience were found to be the speed of page downloads, a clean and clear design, and the functionality of the website.

The study, conducted by the Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC) incorporated figures from an online survey by YouGov.

From the research, Rackspace came up with the following equation:


Pwebsite = { ((14.14* EaseNav) + (13.56*Speed) + (13.11*CleanDes) + (10.89*Func) + (10.89*Up)) ? ((12.63*Pops) + (10.32*Ads) +(5.21*MultiM)) } / 6.26

The first five variables are ease of navigation, speed, clean design, functionality and the time the site is online rather than offline. Websites that score highly in these categories, and get a low score in the last three areas - pop-ups, advertising and Flash or other multimedia content - are the closest to perfection.

Though the ratings that sites would receive in each area are subjective, Rackspace did mention some websites that perform well when assessed using the equation. The rather unsurprising list included the BBC, Google, Wikipedia and eBay.

http://www.rackspace.co.uk/

[Simon]

According to the research, the key aspect of a website for surfers is ease of navigation, with 83 per cent of respondents in a survey of 2,500 people chosing this as the most important factor. Other areas crucial to the user's experience were found to be the speed of page downloads, a clean and clear design, and the functionality of the website.

I think we tick all those boxes.