Candidates for the Dutch Usability Award 2010

At the site frankwatching.com there are 40 websites mentioned as candidate for the Dutch usability award 2010. To test the usability of these sites I decide to check the webguidelines score for these sites. In an earlier test the Helenahoeve got 42 points. I will mention the sites here with 42 points or more:

1. www.alkmaar.nl 45 points; 
2. www.infomil.nl 43 points;
3. www.assen.nl the maximum score of 47 points;
4. www.arrow.nl 44 points;
5. www.pdashop.nl 42 points.

Are the sites valid according to the W3C validator.

1. www.alkmaar.nl Valid XHTML Transitional;
2. www.infomil.nl Not valid, 15 errors;
3. www.assen.nl  Valid XHTML Strict;
4. www.arrow.nl Valid XHTML Transitional;
5. www.pdashop.nl Not valid, 16 errors;

The best sites seems to be alkmaar.nl, assen.nl and arrow.nl.

The next question is of course "How fast are these sites according to Pingdom tools?"

1. www.alkmaar.nl 2.8 seconds / 0.8 seconds;
2. www.assen.nl 5.3 seconds / 5.1 seconds;
3. www.arrow.nl 0.6 seconds, www.arrow.nl/rock/ 1.7 seconds / 1.3 seconds;

The speed of the Helenahoeve was 0.7 seconds. See also the Dutch page overdewebsite.helenahoeve.nl/snelheid.htm.


Assen.nl is slow, Arrow.nl seems to use Flash. So alkmaar.nl is my favorite after helenahoeve.nl.