Formula for the perfect website revealed

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pwebsite.gifAnd when I say formula, I really do mean a formula.

You’ve seen the programmes where a boffin tells us that he (or she) has found the formula for happiness, or the perfect sitcom, or the best food…

Now a study commissioned by Rackspace (who host websites, wouldn’t you know), and carried out by the Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC), has come up with the following formula:

Pwebsite = { ((14.14* EaseNav) + (13.56*Speed) + (13.11*CleanDes) + (10.89*Func) + (10.89*Up)) – ((12.63*Pops) + (10.32*Ads) +(5.21*MultiM)) } / 6.26

In English, the variables after the equals sign are ease of navigation, site speed, cleanliness of design, functionality, and the proportion of time the site is online. That contributes to a positive score. After that come pop-ups (argh!), ads, and multimedia content, which all contribute to a negative score.

Of course this surely varies from site to site – after all YouTube without multimedia content would be pretty empty.

The sites that came out on top, despite a lot of this being subjective, were the BBC, Google, Wikipedia, and eBay, but do you need a formula to tell you which is your Pwebsite… I mean, perfect website?

Andy Merrett
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