By Paul Lang, Editor, Sell It!
July 11th, 1998

See Also   The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet   Alternative Payment Solutions   Fraud Prevention Tools   Top Tools to Help You Boost Customer Service   iV-Caller Verification Service   Make Your Price Sell!   FindWhat.com   Make Your Knowledge Sell!   HumanClick   Netship   iFulfill.com   Nexchange   Nothing But 'Net   Netwhistle.com   Bigstep.com   Make Your Site Sell!   AWeber   GoTo.com   Constant Contact   WebAdverts   PersonalStore   SiteInspector   LinkExchange   ClickTrade   Safe   eCHARGE   MilliCent

Whilst running your own Web store can be very rewarding, it can take a considerable amount of time. And once you've finished answering customers' questions, shipping orders, updating the store with new products and of course, marketing, there is often very little time left for checking the basic fabric of the site.

However, tasks such as checking for broken links or HTML errors play a vital part in ensuring the success of your store. So obviously, any tools that can help manage some of these mundane tasks are a boon. And if these tools are easy to use and free, they are especially welcome.

This is the basis of LinkExchange 's newest service, SiteInspector which checks Web pages for broken links, HTML errors, browser compatibility, spelling mistakes, load time and search engine readiness.

Using SiteInspector is straightforward. The URL of the page to be checked is entered and the criteria to be checked are selected. Hitting the "Inspect Now" button then starts the inspection process.

SiteInspector then returns a summary report that rates the submitted page from one to five "smiley faces" against each of the selected items.

Clicking the links beside each of the criteria leads to a page that explains in detail what problems were found, along with possible solutions.

So what exactly does SiteInspector check for? Here are the major items:

Browser Compatibility
Determines how well the page will display on different browsers. Warnings are displayed for extended HTML tags and attributes that are not recognised by Microsoft and Netscape browsers.

Link Validator
This test locates any "dead" links that the page may have. However, only the first 25 links on each page are checked for validity.

Load Time
Summarises the size of the page content, split in to text and images and gives details of all the images present. It also estimates the load time for the page based on 5 different connection speeds, ranging from a 14.4K modem link through to a T1 connection.

Search engine readiness
This test determines whether the Web page is ready to be successfully indexed by directories and search engines. It checks that the page has a title, and description and keyword meta tags. It also checks that these tags fall within suggested size limits.

Spelling
Checks and lists potential spelling mistakes and suggests alternatives. It does not check for spelling within HTML or Javascript so for example, spelling mistakes in ALT tags will be overlooked. The only language available for checking against is US English.

HTML Design
This test checks the accuracy of the HTML code in the page, although there is no indication as to what level of HTML it is checking against. The report returns line numbers where errors are found and brief details of what the errors are.

Popularity
This feature relies on the built-in ability of Alta Vista, HotBot and Infoseek to produce a listing of pages that are linked to the submitted page.

VERDICT: An excellent suite of tests that covers all the basic Web site management tasks. However, it is unsuitable for larger sites as pages need to be checked one at a time.