The website must contain a precise and meaningful "title tag", a page title. This is based on the following:
- The title is displayed on the title bar of the browser window.
- The title is used when setting a bookmark (or favourite).
- The file title is shown in the browser in the list of pages previously searched.
- Many search engines offer the title as a hyperlink.
- Search engines use the content of the title for their search.
- Website users often only read the first words and should therefore have enough information about the website.
Equally important is the choice of precise and meaningful titles. The content should be summarised in the title, helping users to find the information needed. According to Nielsen, titles should not be longer than 60 characters.
Source and further information:
"Prioritizing Web Usability" by Jakob Nielsen/Hoa Loranger and
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/weblogs.html,
http://www.usability-now.com/suchmaschinenoptimierung/.
The tested website contains very short page titles.
Each page of a website should have its own page title, which reflects the content of the page itself. This carries many advantages, e.g. page titles are used for bookmarking and are read by search engines. Unique page titles therefore lead to search engine optimisation.
Further information:
http://www.socialpatterns.com/search-engine-optimization/writing-better-titles/
Some pages sharing the same titles were found.
"Description" is used to summarise the content of a HTML-page as short and incisive as possible. The content of this meta information is not shown to the user in the internet browser, but search engines do use them to a certain extent to evaluate the relevance of a site for the results page.
The description summarises the content in one sentence. The summaries are normally shown on the results page of search engines and contribute a great deal to the choice of web users.
Further information:
http://de.selfhtml.org/html/kopfdaten/meta.htm#beschreibung
Descriptions are either incomplete or not optimised on the tested website. Verify that the homepage and the sub-pages contain an appropriate description (a short and incisive sentence).
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A potential hint has been identified.
"Even though machine-level addressing like the URL should never have been exposed in the user interface, it is there and we have found that users actually try to decode the URLs of pages to infer the structure of web sites. Users do this because of the horrifying lack of support for navigation and sense of location in current web browsers. Thus, a URL should contain human-readable directory and file names that reflect the nature of the information space."
Source:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605a.html
Further information:
http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/uri-choose
The URL structure of the tested Website is generally good, though some complex URLs are used internally.
A text in upper case reduces the reading speed by approx. 10%. The single words of the text are not easily recognised by the eye, and the whole text blurs into a block. A text in upper case is perceived as aggressive, amateurish, childish and unprofessional. Use upper case only for short titles.
Source and further information:
"Prioritizing Web Usability" by Jakob Nielsen/Hoa Loranger.
Compare also with Schriver, Karen in Dynamics in Document Design, page 274:
"When text is set in all capital letters, reading speed is slowed about 13 to 20 percent. Reading speed is optimal when uppercase and lowercase letters are used. When extra emphasis is needed, bold has been found to be a better cue than uppercase."
The tested website contains little text in upper case.
A table based layout carries many disadvantages if compared to a purely CSS layout. A CSS layout improves both accessibility and performance.
Further information:
A detailed article by Douglas Bowman can be found onhttp://www.stopdesign.com/articles/throwing_tables/.
Hint for webmasters: Be sure that when embedding third party content, e.g. with iFrame, there are no layout tables included.
On the tested website there are many tables, which most probably are also used for the layout.
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A potential hint has been identified.
"According to RFC 2616, Internet HTTP Compression is a method to send, from the Web server, an HTTP response message in compressed format to a requesting Web browser.
HTTP Compression saves transfer data volume and reduces web page load time." As there are some known issues with Internet Explorer 6 you may want to disable compression for IE6.
Source: http://www.http-compression.com/
The website does not use or only partially uses a GZIP or deflate compression for html files.
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A potential hint has been identified.
This test result is available for registered users and Premium Members.
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A potential hint has been identified.