Website Efficiency

Ahhh, the night before the exam. All of us, frantically posting blogs, searching for articles of economic relevance, and struggling to make blogger.com work for us. Granted, many have no problems. But I know, for a fact, I for one, as well as many others, have, or least have had some tremendous difficulty figuring out the site. I began to wonder, what is the economic cost of these sites? How many hours in a day are wasted, trying to make a site work? Searching for investor relations information is a wonderful example. The stockmarket moves at a very high speed, as fast as your Internet connection allows. For those unfamiliar, investor relations is found on many big-money sites, for big-name companies. Investor relations (usually found as a link at the bottom of a site) tells potential and current investors all of the important information needed for investment. According to the link seen above, even professional stock analysts had a success rate of 75% in searching for information. When people who are just average investors, a Joe Schmoe with an Internet connection, the success rate drops off to under 50%. Interesting figures, and this only pertains to stock brokers and investors searching for company information. Consider the economic costs of inefficient websites in your daily life. For example, just making blogger.com work for you probably cost a couple of hours of study time, not to mention the frustration and anger of trying to figure it out. Admittedly, I now know how to work the site (obviously), but I know there are still people who struggle with it. What about marietta.edu? Searching for information on that site can be a nightmare for those not well-versed in the site. I'm sure this blog could go on forever, listing sites that don't work well and cost us all time and money.