Evaluation Criteria

Allocated marks for Evaluation criteria:

The following criteria’s will be evaluated when judging all websites:

Completeness
- All website pages properly completed and accessible
- Contact information such as physical address, email, and telephone number
- Feedback or contact form with basic validation and spam protection
- Data protection and privacy policy
- User consent (cookies) policy
Navigation & Structure
- Effective search and discovery tools to help users find content easily
- All links operational and free of broken links
- Simple, readable, and consistent URL structure
- Easy access to the home page from any section of the site
- Integration with relevant social media and messaging platforms

Desktop
- First Contentful Paint (FCP): To quickly display the first visible element when loading the page
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): To load the main content promptly and make it visible
- Total Blocking Time (TBT): To allow smooth user interactions without delays
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): To prevent unexpected shifts of page elements while loading
- Speed Index: To load content quickly and provide a fast visual experience
Mobile
- First Contentful Paint (FCP): To quickly display the first visible element on mobile screens
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): To load the main content promptly on mobile
- Total Blocking Time (TBT): To allow smooth user interactions on mobile devices
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): To prevent unexpected movement of page elements on mobile
- Speed Index: To load mobile content quickly and provide a fast visual experience

User Experience
- Clear site architecture to organize pages logically
- Site map availability
- User friendliness to make the site easy to use
- Consistency in headers, footers, menus, colors, and alignments
- Visitor support and engagement features such as help, FAQ, comments, reviews, or testimonials

Quantity
- Volume of content with adequate number of pages/posts and varied formats (text, images, videos, documents)
- Up-to-date content with recent updates and relevant information
SEO
- Meta descriptions for pages
- Crawlable links for search engines
- Valid robots.txt file
- Image elements with descriptive alt attributes
- Descriptive and meaningful text content
- Pages accessible for indexing (not blocked from search engines)

Assessment of the website against the OWASP Top 10 security risks.
- Broken Access Control
- Cryptographic Failures
- Injection
- Insecure Design
- Security Misconfiguration
- Vulnerable and Outdated Components
- Identification and Authentication Failures
- Software and Data Integrity Failures
- Security Logging and Monitoring Failures
- Server Side Request Forgery (SSRF)
Usage of Web Application Firewall (WAF)
Properly configured SSL/TLS certificate for secure connections

Additional functional features to improve usability or engagement
- Chatbox integration (live chat, AI chat, etc. | not messaging networks)
- Newsletter sign-up, subscription modules, etc.
- Reviews, ratings system, etc.
- Gamification elements (points, badges, quizzes, etc.)
- Notifications / alerts for users, Interactive calculators or configurators, automatic filtering technologies (IP based, geographical location based), etc.