A quantitative approach to evaluate usability of academic websites based on human perception

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.