The paper describes and discusses a two step analysis for evaluating web based information literacy tutorials in educational practice. In a recent evaluation project the authors used the analysis to examine three web based tutorials developed by three different academic libraries in Norway. Firstly, each web-based tutorial is analyzed as a communicative act by looking at how it argues for its purpose, how it is rhetorically organized and the interpretative repertoires used. Secondly, the tutorial is analyzed as a tool that users form opinions about while using it, and therefore the second part of the analysis focuses on user reception and meaning negotiation. In combination the two different analyses strengthen the evaluation of how web-tutorials as communicative acts become meaningful to users, and how this meaning is negotiated in relation to an educational practice. This approach can be recommended as complementary to more traditional usability tests.