A Comparative Analysis of Maritime Universities Websites

Abstract

Nowadays, the Internet, i.e. its leading services like the World Wide Web are unavoidable in communications, providing services and information sharing. Websites and a variety of Internet pages that make up the World Wide Web are the primary user interfaces for online business, providing information and promotional activities on the Internet. The rapid and progressive development of this medium has led to the fact that there is almost no maritime education institution without its own website, or at least a web page. The quality and success of the presentation via the Internet and the development of websites in a way to suit users’ needs still remain a problem, not only for designers and managers but also for owners, representing an incentive for the analysis and research in the field of maritime colleges. In evaluating user interfaces, including websites, different approaches and methods are used where the usability, due to its widespread use, is most often considered as the main factor of quality. In this paper, usability factors of websites are analyzed using the questionnaire method and available online tools for 20 maritime universities worldwide and the obtained results are presented as well as recommendations for further researches.