An Effective Approach for Evaluating Usability of Web Sites

International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 2019

In the current era, website developers recognize usability evaluation as a significant factor in the quality and success of e-commerce websites. Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP) is one method to measure the usability of the website. Several researchers have applied Logarithmic Fuzzy Preference Programming (LFPP) approach to deriving crisp weight from fuzzy pairwise comparison matrix of FAHP approach. However, there is a lack of LFPP method in determining the consistency index of the decision-maker judgment. In some cases, LFPP method will produce a consistency value of 0 from consistent fuzzy comparison matrices. This value indicates there is a contradiction with what the previous researchers have said, that a constant matrix value should be more than 0. This research proposes the extended Consistent Fuzzy Preference Relation (ECFPR) to assist the regular judgment for specifying the weights in measuring ecommerce website usability. The CFPR method used to form a new pairwise comparison matrix. ECFPR was calculating the lower and upper values at the fuzzy triangular number from the only n-1 comparison, where n is the number of criteria. The numerical experiment showed that the consistency index obtained by extended CFPR method was more significantly better than LFPP method. It was revealed that the optimal value always more than 0. The consistency index of ECFPR method has a higher mean value than LFPP, so that the use of the ECFPR method can improve the amount of consistency comparison matrices. The ECFPR method was also successfully implemented with the experimental case on evaluating ecommerce website usability.

Egyptian Informatics Journal, 2014

In this competitive world, websites are considered to be a key aspect of any organization's competitiveness. In addition to visual esthetics, usability of a website is a strong determinant for user's satisfaction and pleasure. However, lack of appropriate techniques and attributes for measuring usability may constrain the usefulness of a website. To address this issue, we conduct a statistical study to evaluate the usability and accessibility levels of three popular academic websites based on human (user) perception. Two types of usability evaluation techniques were employed in this study. First one is Questionnaire-based evaluation and second one is performance-based evaluation. Usability assessment was performed by analyzing the results from the observed task success rates, task completion times, post-task satisfaction ratings and feedback. We also investigate the possibility of there being any impact of task completion times on participant's satisfaction levels. The results of the questionnaire based evaluation were observed to be consistent with the results of performance-based evaluation. Accessibility evaluation was carried out by testing the degree of compliance of the web pages as per WCAG 2.0 guidelines.

Today website is considered as an image of an organization. The advent of privatization has lead to a cut throat competition among the various educational institutes thus designing an effective website is very important. For designing an effective website it is required to identify the need of the visitors of the website. In current scenario the objective of websites of an educational institute is to provide the student and other users an information platform where they can retrieve any information and also can perform other tasks like learning and tracking records. In order to increase the usability of a website it is required to identify the important parameters that visitor look in a site. In this paper we have identified the important parameters that affect the usability of an educational websites and then propose a model for usability assessment using the Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System Approach (ANFIS).

This paper presents results of the usability evaluation performed according to the methodology of fuzzy usability evaluation that was presented in the previous research of the authors. As a result of a particular evaluation, a usability score is obtained. The score combines various factors affecting the usability of target system. The authors demonstrate the methodology on the example of usability evaluation of Information Systems of Public administration – Web portals. Paper includes results of the case study, its analysis, validation and conclusions.

This research investigated the relative importance of specific design criteria developed for the purpose of this research, in the evaluation of the usability of educational websites from the point view of students; it then evaluated the usability of nine educational websites based on students' preferences. The results showed that content and navigation were the first and second preferred design categories to be considered while evaluating the usability of educational websites, while the organisation/architecture was the least important category. Also, the results showed that there was a statistically significant difference between males and females regarding only one category: the content. Females considered this to be the most important category while males considered it as the second most important. By contrast, the results showed that there were no statistically significant differences between the students of the two selected faculties (the Faculty of Information Technology and Science, and the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences) concerning the relative importance of the developed criteria based on their majors/specialisations. In general, the results showed that the majority of the students were satisfied with the usability of the Jordanian university websites. Specifically, the results showed the students were satisfied with the content and navigation (ease of use) of the tested websites, but dissatisfied with the design of the websites.

Journal of Information Systems and Technology Management, 2013

This research investigated whether a university ranking system called Eduroute could provide useful information regarding the usability of universities' websites. A comparison was conducted between the results obtained by Eduroute regarding the ranking of the top three universities in Jordan, and the results obtained by the heuristic evaluation method regarding the usability of the top three universities' websites. Before employing the heuristic evaluation method, two steps were taken: Investigating the most frequently visited pages on a university's website from the viewpoint of 237 students, and developing a set of comprehensive heuristics specific to educational websites. Then, five heuristic evaluators were selected and asked to visit all the pages determined by the 237 students using the developed heuristics while evaluating each website. The results proved that the ranking of the three universities at Eduroute was an indicator regarding the overall usability of the sites; the first ranked university at Eduroute had the lowest number of usability problems identified by the evaluators, while the least ranked university had the largest number of usability problems. The heuristic evaluators also identified fourteen common usability problems on the three tested websites related to navigation, design, content, and ease of use and communication.

International Journal of Web Applications, 2018

A library website plays an enhanced role compared to its traditional physical library while providing a wide variety of library services to its users. Evaluation of library websites is a key to realize the extent of user acceptance to the website and to improve overall quality of website. Usability is a highly recognized factor to determine how easy to use the website. The models of usability evaluations evaluate the ease of use of website operations and see whether the users can perform their tasks easily. Moving on further, this study has been undertaken in context of library websites in Sri Lanka with the main purpose of exploring the favourable weights of the seven key dimensions and 20 measuring items with the aids of experts in the related field. These dimensions and measuring items were identified from our previous study which have been tested its reliability and validity in assessing library website usability in Sri Lanka with the aids of actual library users in Sri Lanka. Fuzzy theories together with the extent analysis fuzzy analytic hierarchy process method were applied. It was expected to identify the relative importance of the criteria of interest while avoiding uncertainty, ambiguity, loss of data, and difficulties faced in assessment cycle. Triangular fuzzy numbers were used to represent the judgments on the relative importance between each pair of factors that makes experts consensus uniform rather than using linguistic values. The research findings concluded that satisfaction was the dimension that the experts considered most important in evaluating library website usability. The experts rated accessibility as the least important dimension.

Usability testing is a means of measuring how well people can use some human-made object such as a web page, a computer interface, a document, or a device. This study was carried out to perform usability study on three universities websites in order to know the ease with which users can obtain information on them. The websites tested are futy.edu.ng, futa.edu.ng and futonigeria.net. Twenty-two users from a university volunteered to participate in the study. The participants were given five tasks to perform on the three web sites under a close observation of observer to determine their efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction with the web sites. Questionnaires were also used to get the users’ demographic data, users’ satisfaction, overall performance and recommendation on the web sites. The results indicate that futa.edu.ng performed best in terms of users’ effectiveness and efficiency with the sites. Keywords: Website, WebPages, Usability, Users, internet

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 __________________________________________________________________________________________

Advances in Informatics, 2003

The usability is recognized as an important quality factor of any modern website. In this paper, techniques for usability evaluation of a website are proposed and their use is described. The results of application of these techniques are discussed in the frame of the design and evaluation of a web portal, serving an Academic Department. The applicability of the developed techniques in a wide area of web-based applications and their importance in the context of today’s web applications development is also discussed in this paper.

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...

Graphical user interfaces design in software development process focuses on maximizing usability and the user's experience, in order to make the interaction for users easy, flexible and efficient. In this paper, we propose an approach for evaluating the usability satisfaction degree of a web-based system. The proposed method has been accomplished in two phases and implemented on an airlines website as a case study. In the first phase, a website usability test is implemented by a number of users, and then the results obtained are translated into charts for a final web-based system evaluation in the second phase. The results achieved were satisfactory, since the places where the weaknesses and gaps in the website are identified and recommended solutions to avoid them are drawn. The authenticity of the results have been confirmed by comparing them with user opinions acquired from a questionnaire, which proves the precision in which the website is rated.

International Journal of Computer Applications Technology and Research, 2022

Usability of websites has been studied severally in a general term in different sectors such as entertainment, social media and e-commerce. Higher education is a sector that needs more attention because Universities are very important in the society and their websites hold important information for prospective students, parents, faculty, students of the university and the public. Several literature reviews have been conducted on website usability evaluation, not many have focused on University website usability evaluation. Existing reviews of University website usability evaluation have based their review on certain aspect of usability evaluation such as the methods used. The objective of this study is to carry out a systematic literature review of recent studies in this area in order to provide insight for University website developer, usability researchers and higher academic institutions in all. This study focuses on researches conducted on University website usability evaluation from 2016 to 2021. Findings from this study include additional information different from existing literature review, such as, objectives of researches, common usability attributes used by usability researchers, methods of data collection and analysis, changes in data collection due to Covid-19 pandemic and the types of usability problems found. The commonly mentioned usability problems are problems related to interface design, content, navi gation, performance and accessibility.

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...

2012

The importance of considering usability in the design and development of educational websites is well recognised. However, there is a lack of research which has exposed the design features students prefer on an educational website. This research developed specific criteria for evaluating the usability of educational websites consisting of 25 design issues distributed into five major categories: navigation, organisation / architecture, ease of use and communications, design, and content. Then the relative importance of the categories and subcategories of the developed criteria in the evaluation of the usability of educational websites was investigated from the viewpoint of 237 students. A further step was taken to determine if the relative importance differed based on the gender and major / specialisation of the students involved in the research (where students were selected from two faculties: Information Technology and Administration). The results showed that the order of the crite...