Websites Usability: A Comparison of Three University Websites

Science Journal of University of Zakho, 2019

Websites developed for an organisation, especially a university, always need maintenance and improvements to increase user satisfaction and to provide an environment that provides up-to-date information and services in efficient ways. Unfortunately, academic websites are often designed depended on the structure and objectives of an organisation, rather than on whether students, lecturers, and administrative staff find the website usable. This leaves the website users' needs and expectations unsatisfied. The University of Zakho (UoZ), a public university in the Kurdistan Regional Government, is developing its website to include most of the information required. However, the usability of this website still needs to be checked to know whether or not it satisfies users. This study employs a user-based method to get the rate of usability satisfaction from the perspective of students and academic staff, and it investigates whether the occupation has significant impacts on usability satisfaction. This method is achieved by using a Website Analysis and Measurement Inventory (WAMMI) questionnaire, which is including five factors: attractiveness, controllability, helpfulness, efficiency, and learnability. The study offers recommendations and suggestions to the UoZ web developers for improving the website during the maintenance period. Further, this study proposes ways to enhance the academic websites usability.

The aim of this research study was to evaluate the websites of Delta State Polytechnics, namely: Delta State Polytechnic, Ozoro and Delta State Polytechnic, Ogwashi-Uku from the usability perspective. The importance of a website to an academic institution cannot be overemphasized. Websites play huge roles in the world rating of higher institutions, no wonder no Nigerian university is in the list of the best 3000 universities in the world according to webometrics report for 2011. If the status-quo is to be changed, then more Nigerian higher institutions need not only to build websites, but to also appraise the existing sites. Two online automated tools, namely: html toolbox and web page analyzer were used along with a questionnaire directed towards members of our research group. Tools were used to measure the websites internal attributes which cannot be perceived by users, such as html code error, download time, and size of html page. The questionnaire was developed and designed based on 23 usability criteria. Each category deals with one usability aspect. The results showed that the overall usability level of the studied Websites is acceptable. However, there are some weaknesses in some aspects of the design, interface, and performances. Suggestions were provided in the study to enhance the usability of these websites __________________________________________________________________________________________

Sri Lankan Journal of Applied Sciences, 2022

Usable website benefits universities by attracting, retaining, and satisfying their users. As knowledge-producing organizations, universities be obliged to uphold the usability of their websites. A preliminary study on user satisfaction with the Sri Lankan university websites stated that most Sri Lankan university website users are not satisfied with the usability of their university websites. It prompts the importance of studying the usability of Sri Lankan university websites by providing usability improvement recommendations. On the other hand, researchers have not focused on study the usability of Sri Lankan university websites from the perspectives of both website developers and website users. This research aimed to identify website development issues by testing websites with website testing tools and evaluate the quality of the user experience on websites using a questionnaire-based evaluation method. Results of the survey presented that, usability of Sri Lankan university websites is at an average level and different website usability testing tools have observed development issues based on the website development standards. Finally, the study recommends best practices for university website developers to improve the helpfulness, attractiveness, controllability, learnability and efficiency of the university websites in order to provide a better user experience with increasing the usability of Sri Lankan university websites.

2018

As technology continues to advance, usability issues become more and more central to the process of designing new technological tools such as apps, websites, etc. With the increasing progress of technology integration into our lives, usability evaluation is needed in order to humanize technologies and make them user-friendly to the end users. Therefore, the concept of usability evaluation helps to investigate issues related to technologies' interface design. Usability testing is an essential element prior to the release of a product and overseeing the existing products. The college websites, particularly the library web services, serving to academic communities, are the main assets for teaching and learning and they must be designed in a meaningful way with ease-of-use. The goal of this research is the usability evaluation of King Khalid University (KKU) website to determine users' needs, expectations, and satisfaction as well as the current issues with the KKU online services. The research results show that KKU's website has some major, moderate and minor usability problems impeding effectiveness, efficiency and thus decrease users' satisfaction.

Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology Tojet, 2012

Web sites are emerging as a key component of an organization's survival in our ever globalizing competitive world. Usability of a web site has assumed a great deal of importance in terms of satisfying web site users' needs and expectations. The aim of the study is to evaluate and to explore the usability level of Namık Kemal University (NKU) website and provide guidance to develop better and more usable web sites. The research hypotheses have posed six different theoretical factors to be positively associated with website usability. The results have revealed that five of the six factors can positively and significantly affect the web site usability perceptions of NKU members. Results also revealed that some of the demographic factors tested, such as gender and web experience, have significant impacts on usability perceptions of individual users. Furthermore, the study also discusses the potential benefits of improved website usability on governance and proposes ways to improve the usability of websites.

Isico 2013, 2013

Website becomes an integral part how people access information. Thus, it now becomes a challenge to develop a usable and effective website to meet users-needs. Good websites combine both two aspects: aesthetics and ease of use. Dikti.go.id site is one of very popular and highly accessed sites among Indonesian universities. It contains the latest news and information related to the organization of higher education in Indonesia such as policy and legislation, scholarship information, grant programs and many various academic competitions for universities. This paper presents the result of evaluation of the usability of the Dikti.go.id site which includes aspects of its effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction perception. Based on the data analysis, it shows that the effectiveness of the site is high but its level of success is low. This means that there are problems related to the essential way how users navigate the site. This, finally, makes the satisfaction perception of this site be not high enough. exploration, finding information, and interacting with a web site . According to Pearrow [3], when designing a web site, the needs for gaining both a great view and usability are tangible and should be made balanced. A good web site combines aspects of both aesthetics and ease of use. Usability testing is used to measure a web site's effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction perception. It is an effective method to evaluate a system design from the user's point of view. Nielsen [4] revealed a fact that the return on investment (ROI) of a usability criterion based re-designed web can increase up to 83%. ROI itself is based on business metrics which include aspects like conversion rate, traffic numbers, user performance, and feature usage targets.

2017

With the advent of the Internet, most of the academic institutions in the world are providing up-to-date information over their official websites. Nowadays it has been more concerned that the importance of the presence of information through websites to the public. Since web-based information sharing has become more popular and effective, it is required to focus on the usability of a website from the user’s viewpoint. The main objective of the study was to evaluate the usability of the official website of Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka under four main dimensions which are website content and organization , website navigation and links, user interface design and website performance. The questionnaire was designed and developed based on twenty usability criteria that are belong to the above four categories. A descriptive survey conducted and simple random sampling strategy employed to collect data from 194 undergraduates who have the domain knowledge about the usability of a web...

2013

University websites aim at providing up-to-date information and services to students,lecturers, administrators and other users in efficient ways. Unfortunately, website design is often driven by technology, organisational structure, or business objectives, rather than by its usability from the perspective of students in university Website designers end up developing websites which do not meet the needs of the primary users (students). The study evaluated the usability of the University website from the perspective of of 364 university students and investigated whether area of specialisation has significant impacts on these usability factors. This aim is achieved by using a questionnaire based on the five factors of usability defined by WAMMI (Website Analysis and Measurement Inventory): attractiveness, controllability, helpfulness, efficiency and learnability.The results identifies the usability factors that need to be given more consideration when designing an educational website a...

Usability assessment of interactive systems has been a hot topic in human-computer interaction. People at different times and places have attempted to evaluate software, websites, and other tools to ascertain their levels of usability. The essence is to indicate the extent to which such interactive systems are easy to learn, easy to use, easy to remember to use, effective, efficient, error tolerant, aesthetically pleasing and satisfying by users. This work adopts a user-centered approach to usability evaluation of university of Maiduguri website (www.unimaid.edu.ng) by applying a systematic methodology of involving users in performing set tasks (user testing) and using the tasks completion time as metric. The perspective of users due to their ability to allow quick tasks performance,fast downloads, effective navigation, error tolerant, consistency, and minimal background coloring was used in the evaluation. Data collected from the tasks completion time were statistically analyzed for usability criteria of learnability, efficiency, and satisfaction. Feedbacks were obtained from users through questionnaires on areas where improvements are desired from the site and the design-evaluate-redesign cycle recommended to the University' Web Teams to amend poorly developed interfaces and contents.

2015

Information is an important thing that is needed in all aspects of life. Information technology is major prop for service innovation and main weapon to strategy business to win over the competition. With the use of information technology is expected to become the most effective way to find and distribute information. The web site is one of public information services that already is an important part to support the success of particular agencies. Bina Darma University has the website located at http://www.binadarma.ac.id. The need for web based service is measured to know the quality of the website. If a website difficult to used, the users would then not going to even visit the website. Visitors want a website that could be easily used and studied. One way to measure the quality of the web is by using theusability testing method. Five components contained in this method are learnability, efficiency, memorability, errors, and satisfaction (Jacob Nielson: 2003). Based on the above an...