What makes a World Wide Web site a "good" one?


Since we are not given any definition of a good world wide web site, I will take the liberty of formulating my own.

A "Good Web Site",

is a site that has plenty of "useful" information that is organized in a way that is easy to navigate and pleasing to the eye.
Putting things on World Wide Web has to do with making things available to very large potential audiences. Thus by publishing on the Internet, we are increasing the access to our information. A site that is easy to navigate provides easy to use graphical and textual user interface to the user, and thus further increases the accessibility of information.

What it all boils down to is:

If we are publishing on the Internet, it would make sense to make our publications easy to use.

Building a "good site" that is easy to navigate requires:

Micro and Macro Scales:

The question of scale is important in terms of the contents of the site. On the micro scale, we are dealing with a single user, on the macro scale we are dealing with the whole population of potential Internet users.
A site that is "good" on the micro scale may not be considered good on the macro scale since it may contain information which is of no interest for the masses.
Since I was on my own for this project, I have evaluated the sites on a micro scale which means according to my own interests.

This is not All Though:

The publication has to be supported by a technical infrastructure, and a technical team to maintain the servers and network connections.


[ Text-only Main Page || Graphical Main Page ]
"Good" Sites: [ Netscape || TimeOut || FirstView || Tao of HTML || Pratt Institute ]
"Bad" Sites: [ Time Out Istanbul || Perot Powell '96 || Mirsky's || Take a Shot! || Squirrels ]
What's a "Good" Site and What's "Bad" Site anyway?

September 4 1996

Emin Saglamer emin@mail.utexas.edu