The Usability of University Websites: A Study on Sri Lankan Universities

Abstract

Usable website benefits universities by attracting, retaining, and satisfying their users. As the knowledge producing organizations, universities be obliged to uphold the usability of their websites. A preliminary study on user satisfaction about the Sri Lankan university websites stated that, most of the 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 with providing usability improvement recommendations. On the other hand, researchers were not focused on studying 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.