Editorial
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The Gist
- Tools improved, outcomes didn’t. Despite 25 years of advances in diagnostic tools, most websites still fail on accessibility, privacy and overall experience.
- Complexity outpaces capability. Growing digital estates, regulatory demands and rising customer expectations have widened the gap between detection and meaningful action.
- Volume kills prioritization. Teams are overwhelmed by thousands of detected issues, with little guidance on what actually matters for risk, revenue or user experience.
- Diagnostics miss business context. Most tools treat all issues equally, ignore page value and fail to connect fixes to cost, effort or commercial impact.
- AI shifts focus to action. Next-gen tools prioritize high-value issues, integrate with workflows, surface executive insights and automate fixes where possible.
Digital marketers use tools to manage websites that have been evolving for 25 years, but their collective impact on digital customer experience has been disappointing. But new AI-powered capabilities are coming that will have a significant impact.
Any digital marketer, website manager, developer or digital agency consultant will tell you that ongoing testing is critical for website success. You need to identify any required fixes to improve the visitor user experience, reduce risk exposure, increase conversions and ultimately preserve website value.
That's the theory, anyway. But have 25 years of evolution of diagnostic tools and testing practices collectively improved websites? Unfortunately, the answer is no.
Consider compliance around accessibility. Despite a plethora of solutions available that can check for the accessibility of a page, the authoritative WebAIM Million report finds that 94.8% of the top million homepages do not conform to WCAG 2.0.
Another important area, privacy, is also in trouble. Major brands are facing large fines because they are failing to establish cookie consent in line with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) or the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Table of Contents
- Complexity Outpaces the Solutions
- Solution Evolution Is Just Not Enough
- The Problem of Volume
- What Diagnostic Tools Have Historically Missed
- What Is the Future of Web Diagnostic Tools?
- Making the Quantum Leap
Complexity Outpaces the Solutions
Why has a quarter of a century of diagnostic tools collectively failed to deliver?
At the fundamental level, it is because the complexity of website management has outpaced effective solution design.
Diagnostics tools are very much part of the martech stack. It's a crowded, mature market with a patchwork of tools that populate a somewhat fragmented landscape. There are specialist tools that focus on different areas. There are free, freemium and paid-for solutions. There are tools which cover a range of diagnostics but still have significant gaps. Diagnostics are built into some of the core CMS and DXP platforms. And there are also specific plug-ins, add-ons and connectors to integrate different solutions.
Many of these tools have real strengths. Over the past two decades or so the tools that scan, test and report on website performance have progressed significantly. The detection quality has improved, the coverage has expanded and the ability to deliver at scale and at speed has also increased.
Related Article: Navigating the Sea of Accessibility Regulations Under Your Radar
Solution Evolution Is Just Not Enough
So, the tools got better, but the issues they need to monitor to maintain website value have become more complicated through:
- The continuing complexity of regulatory compliance at different levels
- Websites and digital estates growing in size and scope
- The growth of more sophisticated customer experiences and expectations
- ... and more.
And while the tools have improved it hasn't been enough to collectively make a difference. In essence, there is now a structural gap between the sophistication of digital detection capability and the commercial outcomes organizations actually need from their digital solutions.
The Problem of Volume
One of the key reasons that diagnostic tools have failed to make the intended difference or preserved website value is due to an emphasis on volume rather than prioritization.
It is now easy to run a diagnostic tool over your entire digital estate and find every single issue that needs to be corrected. If you have a large digital estate that has not been tightly managed, the sheer volume of the required fixes can be sobering, but it is also confusing. Where do you start?
Up to now most diagnostic tools have produced reports that will list what needs to be corrected. However, there is very little clarity about what should be the priority fixes in terms of commercial value or risk exposure.
What are the issues that really need to be fixed so you don't get fined for breaching the CCPA act or not complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)? What is the immediate fix required that will prevent any more customers abandoning their online purchase? Not all issues identified are equal, but many of the tools and their reporting capability treats them as such.
My own internal research has found there are up to 1,700 different tests and measurements that can be applied to a digital estate. Yet, arguably only 50 of these are truly fundamental, priority measures that need to be acted upon immediately to maintain value and reduce risk.
When there is volume:
- Teams do not know what to prioritize or where to focus their time and potentially miss the big ticket items
- Teams feel overwhelmed, don't know where to start and put off action
- Those enacting improvements are dominated by those with technical expertise who are not always aligned with website value and risk.
- Senior stakeholders have no sense of what is urgent and do not release the budget or make certain actions a priority.
What Diagnostic Tools Have Historically Missed
Traditional diagnostic tools identify issues effectively, but fall short in helping teams act on them. Here are the most common gaps.
| Challenge | Description |
|---|---|
| Equal weighting | Equal weighting is given to different issues, despite some problems being very major and others being extremely minor. |
| Page value blindness | Page value blindness is embedded into the governance model with reporting not reflecting the importance or commercial value of a particular page. |
| No likely cost or time remediation | No likely cost or time remediation is indicated, making it very hard for teams to plan and budget for issue resolution or accurately forecast ongoing costs. |
| No tailoring for different skills or specialists | There is no tailoring for different skills or specialists, meaning that reporting is not geared towards the people best positioned to perform or understand specific fixes, making it harder to develop plans for action. |
| Scan cadence is too frequent | Scan cadence is too frequent with a fresh report delivered every few days, just adding to the volume of output and the resulting confusion. |
| Lack of executive-level reporting | Reporting is seldom tailored to more senior leaders or client-facing teams for them to appreciate the commercial and financial risk involved. There is no scorecard view that summarizes what senior leaders need to know in order to prioritize action and release budget. |
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What Is the Future of Web Diagnostic Tools?
AI is creating a new generation of diagnostic tools that prioritize action over volume. Based on lessons from the past, effective solutions should include the following six essential features.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| A framework based on website value | Digital governance capabilities must be based on what actually matters and prioritize reporting on issues that materially and consistently affect website value and risk. These issues must relate to content, performance, structure and compliance in ways that have direct commercial consequences. |
| Page weighting | Solutions must abandon the notion that all pages are equal and focus on those that have high traffic and directly impact conversions. Page importance is a key determinant for prioritizing actions. |
| An interface for the higher-ups | It is critical to convey the importance of maintenance and changes that directly impact website value and risk. Executives should have access to real-time reporting that reflects more a scorecard view of risk and value, rather than a list of issues that requires technical interpretation or goes into way more detail than required. When leadership has easy governance visibility it helps unlock investment and translates into prioritized action. |
| Cost awareness | Cost visibility allows teams to plan to remedy fixes and make rational investment decisions. Next generation solutions must translate findings into time estimates, cost forecasts and capacity plans to support action. |
| Integration with workflows | Easy adoption is critical. Any diagnostic solution should slot effortlessly within existing website management and publishing workflows so insights are part of everyday website and content management. Having to log into a separate platform, learn a new system or manually translate outputs into actions are all barriers to success. |
| Intelligent automation | Many of the fixes that solutions identify can be automated without the need for human involvement. Broken links, missing alt text, or outdated contact details are just some of the issues that intelligent automation can deal with without human intervention. The new wave of monitoring solutions will balance automation to drive efficiency and improvement, while keeping humans in the loop where they need to be. |
Making the Quantum Leap
The new wave of AI-powered diagnostic and testing tools are already starting to appear and present a quantum leap compared to previous waves of evolution. Over the coming months we will see movement in the space and organizations will be in position of strength to preserve website value, protect their investment in digital, and navigate compliance risk.
How long this will take to collectively translate into a collective improvement in websites remains to be seen, but the solutions are waiting to make a difference.
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