“What do you think of our website?”

We’re asked this question a fair few times and usually quite early in any relationship with a client. We’ve learned to be wary of this question. It’s similar to being asked by a stranger “what do think of my wife (husband)?” or “what do you think of a certain political party?” Be careful how you answer.

In many ways an opium of a website is subjective. As with anything creative, it is perhaps useful to know the relationship of the questioner to the website. i.e did they construct themselves or what involvement did they have.

So you can say of it; looks like the right colours and layout of menus logos etc. But to answer in a meaningful way you need to know some other things, like:

What is the website supposed to do?

When was it created?

Are they monitoring and measuring it?

If they are asking for an evaluation then we need the criteria and what to measure against.

Why was the website set up for? What is it supposed to do?

And actually to judge a website against it measurables rather than its looks is the correct approach. As the numbers don’t lie.