Evaluating Website's - Essay Example

Website Evaluation When seeking a new direction in life, one of the first places people turn these days is to the internet. The internet has thousands of job search engines and a great number of career sites, all designed to help you find the career that matches your needs, skills and desires. However, most of these resources don’t give you a lot of information about what would be a viable career. Before making such an important decision as to which career one should enter, the intelligent individual has already checked out career sites such as The Riley Guide or My Guides USA to learn more about the career path they’re thinking of entering.

Even before this, though, they should realize that the information they are getting is only as good as the source providing it. By developing a strong sense of what comprises a credible website from those that are less credible; one can base important decisions such as which career path to follow on reasonably reliable information given through a strong website. There are a number of ways in which a website can establish its credulity, reassuring users that the information they provide is trustworthy.

A three-year study conducted by Stanford University resulted in the development of 10 guidelines to use when evaluating websites (Fogg, 2002). The first guideline is to check to see if the information offered is backed up with third party sources and whether those sources are accessible. If they are, another guideline is to look at those sources to see if they, too, have some degree of credibility whether they are other websites or individual ‘experts’ in their fields. A website with ‘in-house’ experts should make this expertise known.

If the website is offered by a reputable organization, with a real physical address and contact information, this also points to a more reliable source (Fogg, 2002). The organization should be easy to reach if the user has questions and the site should be easy to use rather than attempting to dazzle with confusing effects. The content of the site should be updated often, be relatively free of annoying promotional material and be free of spelling or other small errors. The Riley Guide meets much of these criteria.

It establishes its credibility by claiming to have been in the business since 1994 and it provides information about the site author, Margaret Dikel. It also features a number of testimonials from businesses and competitors verifying its accuracy and usability. The site is comprised almost entirely of links that provide access to third-party expertise on career advice, job search agencies, resume help and more. It is easy to find a link to contact the site owner at the bottom of every page and the site is very professional-looking with no pictures or other elements to distract the eye.

My Guides USA, however, is not so well-presented. It is poorly organized, making it very difficult to determine where on the page to go to get the information one is seeking. There is no clear information guiding the user to the site owner and no physical address or contact information is made available. Even the typical contact button offered on not-so-reputable sites is missing from this one. The articles provide some hint at outside expertise, but this isn’t strong evidence, there are no provided links or references so that the user can access the original information and the information is not dated, making it difficult to determine just what information is correct and what is no longer valid.

Assessing these two sites, it is clear that only one provides the kind of information someone might need when seeking a new career. Rather than basing opinion on sketchy information provided by unknown individuals an unknown length of time ago, it would be wise to base opinion based on the information found in the Riley Guide, which offers up-to-date material, qualified experts and an easy organization to the site so you can find just what it is you’re looking for. ReferencesFogg, B.J. (May 2002).

"Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility." A Research Summary from the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab. Stanford University. Accessed December 29, 2009 My Guides USA. The Riley Guide