Girl Scout Website Analysis

Whether you’ve spent years selling cookies outside of grocery stores as a child, or you’ve simply eaten the delicious cookies before, everyone knows who Girl Scouts are. For me, being a Girl Scout was one of the most rewarding experiences that I’ve ever been a part of.

Therefore, when deciding which website to analyze, I knew it had to be this one. Not only are Girl Scouts super well known for their community service across the United States but people can’t get enough of their cookies!

This week, I did a deep dive analysis into the Girl Scouts of America website using the tool Screaming Frog. This website has a variety of different content elements for me to explore including a number of hidden elements as well.

My Deep Dive

I explored everything from SEO (search engine optimization), to accessibility, content, writing, and architecture.

SEO

SEO included page titles, meta descriptions and HTLM elements. During my research I found that Girl Scouts was using fairly strong page titles and meta descriptions which was resulting in good SEO. Additionally, they used HTML elemenets such as H1 and H2 tags to help people discover their site.

Accessibility

As for accessibility, this is where Girl Scouts seemed to be slacking. Nearly 6% of the images did not have alt text which was negatively impacting the site and definitely something to revise moving forward.

Content

The type of content displayed was a good variety and had little to no errors. There were no images that were sized incorrectly and no duplicates found. Additionally, the content was well placed throughout the site making it easy to read and understand.

Writing

Moving along to the writing aspect of the site, Girl Scouts can improve in this area as well. This is because I found that 8.4% of the site is considered difficult to read and 1.36% is very difficult to read. This is definitely something that Girl Scouts needs to prioritize going forward as it revises its site. Its important because many people visiting this site may be young girls, therefore we want to make it as easy to read as possible.

Architecture

Lastly, the overall architecture of the site was strong because it is mobile-friendly. When viewing on a mobile device, all the same features still appear and work just as well including the navigation, search bar, and appearance of text and images.