Assessing the Usability of Institutions Web Pages

African journal of science, technology and social sciences, 2024

University websites are gateways to display resources offered by an institution. As such first impression, attractiveness, controllability, helpfulness, efficiency and learnability as defined by Website analysis and measurement inventory (WAMMI) is critical in the design of websites. Usability is an extremely important aspect of the individual website to survive in the digital environment for each University. Universities can communicate with students through their website its mission, vision, values and other general information. Additionally, the university websites also provide a platform to communicate with students, faculty and visitors. It is for this reason therefore that the University should maintain up-to-date content which is well organized and it should be readable for the students, lecturers, administrators, and the general public. Website design is often driven by technology, organizational structure or institution's objectives rather than usability from the perspective of students. This survey sort to assess Usability of University Websites in meeting the expectations of students. All universities now have websites that give access to large viewers' information on their existence. They enable the institutions to spread beyond physical boundaries and seek opportunities in the global market. Therefore, website becomes an essential tool to reach out to the student and should be designed in an appealing easy way to navigate. To ensure websites are of optimal use key metrics like key factors that affect the usability of websites like design, navigation, accessibility and content are key. To assess usability, this survey works explores on methods and tools used to assess student satisfaction when navigating the website. Baseline being that there is student expectations in shaping perception of usability and best practices for improving the website to needs of the students.

The aim of this research study was to evaluate the websites of Jordan's universities from the usability perspective. Two online automated tools, namely: html toolbox and web page analyze were used along with a questionnaire directed towards users of these websites. Tools were used to measure the websites internal attributes which can not 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 divided into 5 categories. 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 are provided in the study to enhance the usability of these websites.

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.

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...

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.

The usability of an interface is a fundamental issue to elucidate. Many researchers argued that many usability results and recommendations lack empirical and experimental data. In this research, the usability of the web pages is evaluated using several carefully selected statistical models. Universities web pages are chosen as subjects for this work for ease of comparison and ease of collecting data. Series of experiments have been conducted to investigate into the usability and design of the universities web pages. Prototype web pages have been developed according to the structured methodologies of web pages design and usability. Universities web pages were evaluated together with the prototype web pages using a questionnaire which was designed according to the Human Computer Interactions (HCI) heuristics. Nine (users) respondents' variables and 14 web pages variables (items) were studied. Stringent statistical analysis was adopted to extract the required information form the data acquired, and augmented interpretation of the statistical results was followed. The results showed that the analysis of variance (ANOVA) procedure showed there were significant differences among the universities web pages regarding most of the 23 items studied. Duncan Multiple Range Test (DMRT) showed that the prototype usability performed significantly better regarding most of the items. The correlation analysis showed significant positive and negative correlations between many items. The regression analysis revealed that the most significant factors (items) that contributed to the best model of the universities web pages design and usability were: multimedia in the web pages, the web pages icons (alone) organisation and design, and graphics attractiveness. The results showed some of the limitations of some heuristics used in conventional interface systems design and proposed some additional heuristics in web pages design and usability.

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.

The University library websites aim at providing resources, 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 web site from the perspective of 75 university students and investigated whether area of specialisation, age, and gender and students category has significant impacts on these usability factors. This aim is achieved by using a survey approach based on the three factors of usability defined ISO 9241-11 (1998) effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. The results identifies the usability factors that need to be given more consideration when designing an educational website and shows that different perspectieves derived from area of specialization, age, gender and category gives different evaluation.

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.

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...

Sindh University Research Journal (Science Series), 2019

In this digital era, the website of a university is a doorway to its information and services. Users expect that a university website must be designed professionally with user-friendly interface, which help them to search, navigate and collect information effectively. In this paper, the usability evaluation of the websites of the universities of Pakistan is performed through guideline scoring. In doing so, literature has been reviewed and a set of 77 guidelines divided into 11 categories are developed. Further, these guidelines are then used to evaluate top 10 universities of Pakistan. Based on the results of this study, we provided the scores to the website designs. Through the scores, we identified the top 3 university website designs, and the top designs in the particular categories of guidelines as well. We also identified the common usability issues in the designs of the university websites of Pakistan. The results of this research will help academia, practitioners, website developers and usability specialists to understand the problems of existing websites, which in overall may help them to design more usable 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.

Since the explosion of the internet, web portals and their uses have become more advanced and complex. Web portals are a major source of obtaining information over the internet. It is easier and faster than looking up information in a “real” library. As distance education has moved from traditional, correspondence courses to online educational web sites, it becomes important to look at the usability or “ease of use” of these instructional web sites from the student’s perspective. This research explored what the construct of usability means for students taking online courses, this study has been performed to also analyze the usability of university web portals and how they are used by students, staff and outside visitors. Almost every university has a web portal, but how efficient they are or if they are used as they should be will be determined in this study. A portal by definition is a gateway, a front door to other portals or sites. A university portal should provide certain services for individuals depending on the needs of that user. Moreover, the content and the overall impression of the web portal can influence a potential student when choosing which university they will apply to. Every year millions of people visit university web portals looking for information. This could be, for example, students looking for course information, change in lecture times, account access or teacher contact information. It is very important that the whatever it is the user is searching for is easy to find and the content is easily understood. Although, the construct of usability is not well understood, it is apparent that usability does not reside in software alone, but instead is a construct resulting from the interaction of software design and user expectations. This study sought to understand what usability means within the context of one online and distance learning program at universities.

2016

This study carried out a usability evaluation of some selected Nigerian universities websites. A total number of ten randomly selected universities though; mostly first and second generations universities were taken into account. This was done by making use of automated tools such as web page analyzer and HTML toolbox for data collection. The internal attributes that were taken into consideration embodied Total number of html files, Total html page size, Total size of images, Total number of images, Total number of external files, Total size of external files, as well as Load time, HTML check and repair, Browsers compatibility, Pages with bad links respectively and the various values were collected and analysed and presented in the graphical form using bar charts. The results showed that some of universities ’ websites adhered to the laid down threshold values of these attributes while some are still very much lacking. These include University of Calabar, Nnmadi Azikiwe University a...

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.