Stanford's guidelines for web credibility | Hacker News Reader

Stanford's guidelines for web credibility

credibility.stanford.edu

51 pointsmarketer12 comments

Is it just me or are all the guidelines listed just plain common sense?

I really hadn't even considered #7 - "Make your site easy to use -- and useful."

So far I have been making mine hard to use, and useless, so this article came as a shock.

edit: Come on... 3 years? 4,500 people? Was there anything really surprising on the list that wasn't brain dead obvious?

Research shows that when common sense is supported by research it seems more credible.

Some people think they can cut corners and fool others.

And that's exactly why you should forward it to your boss ;)

While they should have done a better job highlighting the interesting parts of the research, dig a bit deeper and you will find them. The PDF links at the bottom are worth reading.

(I know some people who worked on this stuff, and they are great people with lots of cool research and ideas.)

I agree that they are the "cutting edge of common sense but you would be surprised at the number of sites that violate the first five (which I believe are key for B2B firms).

1/Make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site.

2/Show that there's a real organization behind your site.

3/Highlight the expertise in your organization and in the content and services you provide.

4/Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site.

5/Make it easy to contact you.

"Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem."

Thanks you, Standford! I feal that you have opened up a door in my mind and I will never bee the same!!1

"Standford?"

I concurr with the previous comments that most of these "guidelines" are common sense and this is definetly not groundbreaking.

What is nice though is that you have a statistical "verified" list which is >most< and with is >least< important of the common sense we already know.

Another thing why this could be probably^W interesting is that it could influence e.g. goverment, or other institutional sites.

8. Update your site's content often (at least show it's been reviewed recently).

"Updated June, 2002"

Typographical errors and broken links hurt a site's credibility more than most people imagine. It's also important to keep your site up and running.

"The domain www.webcredibility.org which you are trying to access is currently unavailable."

This is what students at Stanford are getting academic credit for?

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