Website Evaluation

At one point in my life, I was quite interested in gastroenterology and so I chose to search for various websites on the topic of Ulcerative Colitis and/or Crohn’s Disease. I came across two sites that seemed quite professional, but found that one proved to be a more valuable resource for anyone who suffers from either IBD. The sites I chose to analyze were titled, “CCFA: Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America,” located at http://www.ccfa.org/ and “Colitis & Crohn’s Health Recovery Services,” located at http://www.colitis-crohns.com/.

Without having even looked at the pages, I can reason from the URLs that the second site is a commercial site (.com), and therefore trying to sell something. I do not want to imply that people selling items are dishonest, but the site will contain an obvious marketing agenda behind any information that it may give. The first site, however, has a “.org” ending, and therefore will most likely run by a nonprofit agency or something like that. When I looked at each of the pages, they seemed very similar from a design point of view, however, when I started to look at the content contained within the sites, I found that I was, for the most part, right in my assessment of the URLs. The “Health Recovery Services” page has links on its first page to order products that the site’s author sells. It also has testimonials, which instantly makes me think about infomercials. I say that I was right “for the most part” because I noticed that the CCFA page has links at the bottom, saying that the foundation is sponsored by several different pharmaceutical companies. However, I found that this site follows the HONcode principles (located at http://www.hon.ch/HONcode/Conduct.html) which states that any of the medical or health advise that is given out on the CCFA site, is only given by qualified medical professionals. The other site however states that the author, David Klein, although having had colitis himself, is not a qualified medical professional. He is a health education consultant and certified nutrition educator” (http://www.colitis-crohns.com/about.html).

Both sites are similar in that they are both targeting adults who have one of the IBDs (irritable bowel diseases), or a parent of a child with one of the IBDs. This is obvious not only through the site URLs, but also in the categories of information that are covered on each page. The CCFA site has links to pages that contain information about research that is being done that relates to their diseases, to new updates, links to help people find a doctor, links to programs that help people deal with their diseases and many more. The links also imply that the site is geared toward people of all different experiences with the diseases. They have free brochures about the diseases for teachers, parents, kids, one’s discussing diet and medication (http://www.ccfa.org/brochures/) and even a glossary of terms. The site is also a resource for doctors, as there are links to medical journals and organizations for the medical community.

The “Health Recovery Services” page seems to target a more naïve audience, or at least, the type of audience that would buy something through an infomercial, knowing not much about the product they are buying. The author is very confident in what he is saying, however, people with any kind of biology or medical background could easily discredit some of his statements. For example, he says, “Medical people mistakenly believe that the body's inflammation response is an "auto-immune" phenomena - - this theory is incorrect and illogical; the body only works to heal itself and never creates any physiological process that would harm itself.”( http://www.colitis-crohns.com/new.html). His tone clearly looks down upon the medical community and his comment is obviously unresearched, as most people know that something as natural as a fever is a physiological process that harms the body. His site is geared toward people who are looking for alternatives to medicine and who are willing to put total faith in him, unwarranted though it may be. All the links on his site are geared toward the user buying into what he has to say, and then buying his product. Whether it be testimonials or lines that point out that the user must order a booklet before contacting the website’s author, everything is focused on making a sale.

In terms of graphics, the sites are relatively similar. There really aren’t any graphics on the CCFA page. It is simply filled with the information. The “Health Recovery Services” page has a main picture of a tree on a few of the pages. I think that this is meant to emphasize the “natural” lifestyle that the author lives and the viewer can supposedly be cured by. The sterile page that the CCFA has creates a more knowledge based atmosphere. I believe that it isn’t relying on fancy graphics because the object of the page is to give information. Of course, their information more than speaks for itself. They have links to very prominent medical journals, are given grants to do research on the diseases, and lists of doctors who are members of the CCFA.

I checked the each of the websites for any type of indication as to how up-to-date they were. The only date, other than the copyright (2002), that I could find on the CCFA page was an update in August 2002. I was very surprised on the “Health Recovery Services” page when I found, in the second page of testimonials, that someone had given a testimonial in March of 2003 (http://www.colitis-crohns.com/testimonials-2.html). Were I thinking of buying into this man’s testimonials, this would certainly make me think twice. What I would conclude from this inaccuracy is that the testimonials are most likely fake. I do not know for certain that that this is true however, it is simply what I would conclude. The author is not a medical professional, he does not seem to have even a basic understanding of human physiology, he is trying to sell his products, and now this inaccuracy with the date. The only thing this website seems to have going for it is that the links all work. Of course, they all work on the other site as well.

In evaluating these two websites, I found that one was much more informative, unbiased and simply a better source of information about Crohn’s disease and Colitis. Although they first both seemed to be about the IBD’s, one was more oriented toward conveying knowledge and continuing to educate people about the diseases, whereas the other was just out to sell a product. Although the author of the “Health Recovery Services” page tried to make a very convincing argument that buying his product would cure everyone of their IBD, there were too many strikes against him to really put any faith in what he was saying.

In terms of the NCC competencies, which do not really fit well into this report as it is about evaluating websites, not myself, I used critical thinking and communication to do this project. I had to study different aspects of each website and evaluate its legitimacy. I had to figure out what was fact and what was an opinion and be able to communicate how I knew that. I needed to be able to express how I came to the conclusions that I made. By using these competencies together I was able to create this lengthy website evaluation. However, in all honesty, I do not think that I necessarily enhanced any of the NCC competencies, so much as I just used them to the best of my ability.