When someone builds a website, there are many factors to check to ensure the website is working for everyone at its optimal level, and website evaluation tools are used to accurately measure these factors. Accessibility website evaluation tools check a website to ensure it is compatible with programs that help people with certain disabilities access and use the website. Each website is built with code and, while non-standard code can be used, coding evaluation tools ensure the code is standard and working its best with all computers. Designing a website to work for every screen size is difficult, but there are evaluation tools to help designers with this. Search engine optimization (SEO) tools ensure the website is correctly optimized for search engines.
It is estimated that about 30 percent of the world's population uses the Internet as of 2011, and many of those users have some sort of disability that requires a special program to help with access. For example, a screen reader is a program that reads a website’s text aloud so users with severely impaired vision can hear it instead of struggling to make out the text. Accessibility website evaluation tools check a website’s coding to ensure that such programs can be used properly, so everyone can browse the website in one form or another.
Coding can be a fickle thing, because many non-standard tags exist that create special effects or make coding easier, but some of these tags only work on particular Internet browsers. With coding website evaluation tools, the website coding is matched against coding standards to help ensure that the website will work on a range of browsers. While some of these programs can automatically standardize the code, most will just highlight any problems and leave it to the designer to correct, if desired.
Computer monitors come in all different sizes and, while there are ways of designing a website to stretch it across the monitor, this does not always work as planned. For example, the website may cut off or sections may be unreadable. To check for these problems, screen-size website evaluation tools show the designer what the website will look like on different size screens, so problems can be corrected.
Many website owners want their website indexed by a search engine to bring in traffic, but they may not know how to optimize the website or may just want to ensure that the website is fully optimized. Search engine optimization (SEO) website evaluation tools check the website’s body, headers and title to ensure they are optimized for one or several keywords. These programs will often suggest ways to further optimize the website, unless it is optimized perfectly.
One other consideration for website evaluation is security, and various programs and tests are available to help evaluate a website's security features. These tools can help ensure that visitors to a website won't be automatically rewarded with a virus that can crash their computer system. Such tools also can help ensure that any interactions between the person browsing the website and the website itself — especially interactions that involve financial transactions or personal information — are kept confidential and secure.