Website Grader

There are some interesting tools out there that grade the quality of your website. I think these tools are a great sanity check for any company, be it a start-up or a well-established corporate. In this blog I will test some companies using a tool called www.Website.Grader.com. The tool is very simple, you just need the URL of the website and it will spit out a score on 100 point scale. The tool provides scores on 4 areas:

1. Performance (30pts) indicates the esthetics of the site, the user friendliness and speed;
2. Mobile (30pts) indicates how well designed the site is mobile use;
3. SEO (30pts) indicates how easy and effective the design and wording of the website is for search engines to understand so the website gets ranked higher;
4. Security (10pts) indicates if the website is properly protected from attacks.

I have tested 10 different companies that I thought were interesting to test and report back on.

1. Facebook.com – 87pts. The only area Facebook underperformed was SEO where it scored 20 out of 30 points. I don’t believe facebook has an issue with being know by people so that not really concern.
2. Bloomberg.com – 89pts. Bloomberg scored maximum on all categories except performance where it scored 19 out of 30. This doesn’t come as a surprise to me. As a daily user of the site I am often frustrated by the speed of the site.
3. Website.Grader.com – 82pts. WebsiteGrader scored high on all areas except security where they scored 0 out of 10. This is shocking to me as they advise every website on this and don’t follow standard practice themselves.
4. Google.com - 87pts. Similar score to Facebook Google scored 20 out of 30 on SEO but they are by far the largest search engine out there so it’s not really important for them.
5. Apple.com – 89pts. Apple score 24 out of 30 on performance and 25 out of 30 on SEO. Nothing too much to report on this result.
6. Wallmart.com – 50pts. Wallmart scores ok on Performance and SEO but zero on Security and Mobile. It is mindboggling to me that Wallmart does not have a mobile friendly website as their online sales have been increasing and are expected to continue to do so.
7. C21.com – 62pts. Because of Wallmart’s underwhelming score I was interested to test another retailer. C21 also scored poorly but more so on SEO which is troublesome as they are a lesser known brand. C21 scored maximum on Mobile.
8. Columbia.edu – 76pts. Columbia scores maximum on Mobile and SEO and 21 on Performance. Their score of 15 out of 30 on SEO is disappointing. The main advice Website Grader gives is that Columbia can do a much better job at meta description, i.e. usage of appropriate keywords for images and videos.  
9. Nestle – 45pts. Surprisingly Nestle scores zero on Mobile and 10 on SEO. These are all easily fixable but I was expecting Nestle to use these standard practices.
10. Microsoft – 94pts. Microsoft got the highest score of all companies tested. They scored maximum on all segments except performance where they scored 24 out of 30.