The Web Guidelines

Time to test the sites against the Web Guidelines. See http://www.webrichtlijnen.nl/english/test/

The results are:

1. bol.com Score: 34
2. funda.nl Score:  39
3. helenahoeve.nl Score:  42
4. nu.nl Score: 30
5. philips.nl Score: 36
6. postbus51.nl Score: 46
7. rabobank.nl Score: 39
8. vrom.nl Score: 44
9. wehkamp.nl Score: 33
10. wnf.nl Score: 31

The maximum score is 47. www.helenahoeve.nl will never reach this maximum because:

1. We give the user the option to open an external link in a new tab. This is not allowed when you use a STRICT doctype. This decision costs us 3 points;
2. We have grouped images and the corresponding text in a DIV. To do this neatly we have to define the style width=. This decision costs us 2 points.

Ranking the sites based on this score gives the following graph:

Testing the quality of the HTML code

Okay, time for a technical test. I will test the quality of the code with several tools. First the well known W3C Validator.

1. bol.com 126 errors, 45 warnings
2. funda.nl 65 errors, 26 warnings
3. helenahoeve.nl Valid XHTML Transitional
4. nu.nl 150 errors, 83 warnings
5. philips.nl 8 errors, 2 warnings
6. postbus51.nl Valid XHTML Strict
7. rabobank.nl Valid XHTML Strict
8. vrom.nl 9 errors, 9 warnings
9. wehkamp.nl 45 errors
10. wnf.nl 13 errors, 11 warnings

I am flabbergasted, only 3 sites which validate. I don't believe this. Will Total Validator give the same number of errors? The answer is below ...

1. bol.com HTML errors: 41
2. funda.nl HTML errors: 45
3. helenahoeve.nl HTML errors: 0
4. nu.nl HTML errors: 200
5. philips.nl HTML errors: 5
6. postbus51.nl HTML errors: 2
7. rabobank.nl HTML errors: 5
8. vrom.nl HTML errors: 0
9. wehkamp.nl HTML errors: 5
10. wnf.nl HTML errors: 17

... and not consequent. There are sometimes more errors (e.g. wnf.nl) and sometimes less errors (e.g. vrom.nl, wehkamp.nl). However one thing is very clear. www.helenahoeve.nl is the only test site with no problems at all.

Searching on the web learns me that less than 5% of the websites are following the standards correctly and validate. See the article MAMA Key findings. I thought that I compared the website of the Helenahoeve with some top sites. Hmmm, they have a lot to improve.

Ranking based on validation:

1. helenahoeve.nl, postbus51.nl, rabobank.nl
2. bol.com, funda.nl, nu.nl, philips.nl, vrom.nl, wehkamp.nl and wnf.nl

Ranking based on the number of errors:

1. helenahoeve.nl, vrom.nl
2. postbus51.nl, philips.nl, rabobank.nl, wehkamp.nl
3. wnf.nl
4. bol.com, funda.nl
5. nu.nl