Improving web user satisfaction by ensuring usability criteria compliance

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to improve and facilitate the work of developers and usability evaluators by providing an adaptable and effective support. A well-defined set of criteria and a range of evaluation values for each criterion as well as a complete websites classification, will guide evaluators. A usability percentage and a list of prioritized criteria, adapted to the type of website by a new usability metric, will help developers to improve the website. This improvement will increase the degree of web user satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach – Having established and validated a new usability evaluation framework, several usability tools have been analyzed. None of them totally fulfills the requirements of the evaluation framework. As a result of being unable to customize any of them, a new one has been developed. A study of 42 enterprise websites in an economically depressed region of Europe was performed using the new tool. This study involved 42 evaluators and 118 web users. Users have evaluated the websites before and after the redesign. A end-user computing satisfaction model-based questionary was used to collect data about end-user satisfaction. The results validate the proposal. Findings – The study confirms that the proposed tool provides valuable information during the process of web development, evaluation and redesign. In adittion, it reveals that improving websites usability by ensuring criteria compliance has a positive effect on web users satisfaction. Originality/value – Unlike previous purposes, the proposed tool allows to evaluate any type of website with a well-defined set of evaluation criteria and specific criteria values. As outcomes, the tool provides the website usability degree and a list of criteria ordered by priority repair. These results are adapted to the specific type of website. This makes easier and more effective the redesign of the evaluated website.