Here in my home state of Massachusetts, a problem in recent years involved elementary schools (already considered to be among the best in the country) that were concentrating too much effort on teaching students to pass the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment Test, commonly known as MCAS. More recently replaced by newer testing that is in line with the national Common Core Standards that have been adopted by most states, the problem with MCAS was that teachers had to devote far too much classroom time teaching students to score highly on tests rather than actually learning. I am not a teacher, but is seems to me that it is more important for students to learn effectively than to be taught to pass tests with the highest possible scores.

A similar issue takes place when companies that market their website services run bot-based tests that present audits of potential website errors, warnings and load speeds. There is no question that it is important to have a site that renders properly and loads quickly across a full range of browsers and devices; however, all speed tests have their limitations. To run an automated test that purports to present the final word on the quality of a website and the experience that it offers to visitors is a flawed concept at best and a competitive potshot at worst.

No bot can effectively measure the quality of the end-user experience because that is an inherently subjective process. There is a tradeoff between a site that is visually exciting and a site that loads instantly, and many of the “errors” that bots identify account for mere milliseconds in the scope of initial overall page load times. A site that consists of nothing but text will usually run a perfect score, but how many reservations do you think such a site might generate for a campground or outdoor resort? My advice is to avoid falling for the bait, particularly when it is offered by companies that fall short themselves when it comes to overall quality and integrity of design – factors that directly influence human-based decisions rather than bot-based tests.

Let me offer an analogy that relates to the family camping industry. Many parks have begun offering one of the many “wine and paint” sessions that have become popular in recent years. They all follow a similar formula, where an artist whose career has never caught fire leads a session where attendees drink just enough wine to encourage their creativity but not so much wine that they can’t find the end of the paintbrush with the bristles. The idea is for everybody to copy the painting that the session leader paints. The order of the day is uniformity, a lack of originality, and the building of self-esteem. If Pablo Picasso was still alive and attended one of these sessions, his work would be the laugh of the evening.

When it comes to websites, the single most important consideration is whether or not a site is mobile-friendly. A site that is not optimized for display on mobile devices – particularly smartphones – presents an impediment to the end-user experience. What is most important is how long it takes before a user is able to read and navigate your site. Whether some images might take a few seconds to load is not an impediment to that experience.

If you are wondering whether your website is up to par, ask for a human, personalized evaluation of its strengths and weaknesses. That will take some time and effort to prepare, but it will offer results that are based upon the actual experiences of human end-users, not the bots that will never contact you to make a reservation for Site 127 for the second week of August.

Times change, along with the ways that websites are viewed and the algorithms that determine how they are ranked in search results. The one thing that is consistent is the importance of working with a knowledgeable and reliable company with a trusted track record to stay on top of things and to represent the best interests of your company.