In rifling through the comments of a Product Hunt post I noticed an unfamiliar acronym: Competence At A glance [CAAG].
A quick Google search did not reveal origins or other uses.
“Elizabeth” - who does not seem to exist, was using [CAAG] to communicate how the commented website made her feel.
The more up to date the website, the more competency the brand has. The better you feel about engaging with the site.
“Competence” as a measure of ability is important. A valuable metric when analyzing startups and MVPs.
Immediately I connected the notion to a recent research project where I’ve been seeing some very old websites (last update 2009 - 2015).
[CAAG] was not an appropriate metric here.
These websites don’t lack competency, they are demonstrating clear, authoritative value.
What they lack is trust.
Because the sites are so old they don’t communicate trust.
This lead me to coining, to the best of what I can see, [TAAG] - Trust At A Glance.
TAAG’s become a useful metric in grading websites and I’ve integrated it into my framework.