1 in 7 commercial websites have errors on their homepage

December 17, 2003

Jupiter Research, a division of Jupitermedia Corp., today announced that one in seven Web site home pages it recently tested failed a simple link integrity test with one or more errors severe enough to cause visitor defection. Based on a December 2003 review of 239 well-known consumer Web sites, Jupiter's new report found that one in seven consumer-facing Web sites had prominent errors on their home pages.

Of the home pages tested, which ranged across a variety of industries, 24 had broken links ("404" errors), 14 provoked server errors, five linked to sites with nonexistent host names, and three pointed to servers that responded with server unavailable errors.

In all, Jupiter Research tested over 22,000 links, more than 50% of which were routed through manual "redirect" or tracking scripts, to measure consumer behavior, a tactic especially prone to generating errors.

According to a recent Jupiter Research Executive Survey, the number one challenge faced by Web site operators is improving site usability (49% of respondents), a priority that outweighs the challenge of budget constraints (47% of respondents) or measuring ROI (40% of respondents). Despite this priority, Web site quality remains poor for many Web sites; based on the one in seven failure rate of home page link integrity, Jupiter Research estimates that many Web sites have errors severe enough to undermine visitors' confidence and cause them to turn elsewhere.

According to David Schatsky, Senior Vice President of Research at Jupiter Research, "Despite the high priority of improving site usability, the basics of Web site operations - having error free pages, consumer-friendly messaging and navigation that makes sense - require putting yourself in the visitor's shoes, a tact only indirectly served by traditional quality assurance."

The report counsels site operators to adopt a raft of visitor-centric site management tactics and technologies to ensure the highest possible site integrity.

Source: Business Wire

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