Web Diagnostic Tools Research Articles

An assessment of website quality at Nigerian polytechnics and colleges of education

This study assessed the quality of the websites of Nigerian polytechnics and colleges of education. Using two web diagnostic tools, SEOptimer and W3C Markup Validation Service, a total of 213 sites were evaluated in terms of six performance indicators: search engine optimisation (SEO), usability, operational performance, social media integration, security, and HTML validation. The weakest performance across the sites of both polytechnics and colleges of education was found to be with respect to social media integration, with the vast majority of sites in both categories making no use of social media. The other two indicators against which sites in both categories of institutions tended to perform poorly were SEO and operational performance. The two areas where the sites in both institutional categories generally scored well were usability and HTML validation. Meanwhile, for the security indicator, the performance was highly variable among both polytechnic and college of education sites, with significant numbers of both strong and weak scores for sites. It was also found that polytechnic sites outperformed college of education sites on SEO to a statistically significant degree (bearing in mind that both categories of sites were weak in this area). It was also found that, among the polytechnic sites, the sites of the state government-owned institutions outperformed, to a statistically significant degree, the sites of the privately owned institutions in their operational performance measure.

How diverse is hotel website accessibility? A study in the central region of Portugal using web diagnostic tools

Accessible tourism is a very important growth market that should not be ignored by the tourism industry, not only due to legal obligations and social responsibility but also because of business opportunities. However, people with special needs face various constraints in accessing tourism products. The absence of accessible information is one of the main barriers that people with special needs face when they intend to travel. The Internet represents one of the most important information sources in tourism. However, a limited number of studies examine the use of the Internet in the accessible tourism market, specifically website accessibility. To extend knowledge in this field, this study aims to analyse the website accessibility of hotels and Pousadas de Portugal located in the Central Region of Portugal. A sample of 306 websites was analysed based on Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, using automatic web diagnostic tools (AccessMonitor and TAW). This analysis was performed considering the A, AA and AAA conformance levels of WCAG. Findings reveal that the web accessibility level of the hotels analysed is low, with the ‘Perceivable’ and ‘Robust’ guidelines being the most critical. Moreover, there are differences in the web accessibility levels in terms of hotel category. Contrary to what was expected, the higher category hotels present the lowest level of web accessibility. These results can help hotel managers and web designers to improve communication with an important growth market – accessible tourism.

A review of website evaluation using web diagnostic tools and data envelopment analysis

This paper presents a review of the most recently published works of the use of data envelopment analysis (DEA) in the evaluation of websites of different fields such as healthcare, e-business, e-commerce, and e-government. The evaluation of websites is performed using web diagnostic tools (WDTs). Some studies have evaluated e-government websites using WDTs only, while others integrate them with data envelopment analysis. We summarize each study including the country that was conducted in, the size of data set, inputs to DEA, outputs from DEA, the approach used, the tools used, and the results obtained. It also covers whether there is a use of combination between DEA and data mining or machine learning approaches to classify the efficiency of these websites.

Evaluating Usability for e-Learning andldquo;Madrasatiandrdquo; Platform in Saudi Arabia

Software usability evaluation is an important concept in the discipline of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) due to its benefits in the process of software development. Little research has been done to evaluate the accessibility and usability of the e-learning websites in Saudi Arabia due to limited availability of e-learning solutions offered in Saudi in general, especially during the pre-tertiary education which lacked any sort of e-learning capabilities before the COVID-19 pandemic. The current study was conducted to evaluate the usability and the content accessibility for the Madrasti platform in Saudi Arabia. Different web diagnostic tools and measures have been used in the evaluation process. The result shows that Madrasti platform has several issues in terms of usability and content accessibility.

Evaluating Usability and Content Accessibility for e-Learning Websites in the Middle East

Quality has become a fundamental requirement for success and sustainability of websites. This study discusses the evaluation of some e-Learning websites as one of the main sources of information to administrators, students and teachers in the educational systems. This article investigates the quality of e-learning websites in the Middle East in term of usability and content accessibility. Eleven websites from eleven countries were selected for this study. Evaluations process is done based on different web diagnostic tools and measures. The experimental results show several issues on usability and content accessibility of the selected e-learning websites. Many usability problems with respect of speed and number of broken links were found. Moreover, the design of the selected websites is not fit with the content accessibility standards.

Evaluating the Quality of Indian School Education boards’ websites using multi criteria decision making models

The need for a good quality education website for reliable, effective and attractive web presence is increasing as online technology is becoming an important part of the educational process. A good school education related website is very important for delivering a good user experience and satisfaction for its users, including teachers, students, and parents. Evaluating the school education websites is largely a neglected area and need to be addressed, since lack of usability may constrain the usefulness of an educational website. This research attempts to investigate and measure the quality of the education board website of India via online web diagnostic tools. The websites are evaluated on the basis of selected quality parameters—response time, download time, page size, broken links, accessibility, markup validation, design optimization, traffic and page rank. The websites are then ranked using decision making model—Linear weighted model and TOPSIS. The ranking obtained from the two models are compared to investigate the difference in the distribution of rankings. The result of this study confirmed that the website presence of school education board website is neglecting performance and quality criteria. The result shows that there is a significant correlation between the rankings obtained by two models.

Accessibility and Performance Evaluation of E-Services in Oman Using Web Diagnostic Tools

With the advancements in technology, there is a paradigm shift in the outlook, usage, provision, and access of e-services. This has led to increased availability of services through electronic media as e-services, e-government services, e-businesses, e-commerce, and many more. It is imperative to ascertain the quality of such services regularly against internationally accepted guidelines, standards, and tools to verify whether it is satisfying, increasing user expectations and technological advancements. This research investigates the current status of the quality of e-services in Oman by considering key quality dimensions that affect the services in the country using web diagnostic tools. The study not only benchmarks against international standards but also gives an insight into any meager aspects of quality of e-service in Oman. The study concluded that selected e-services in Oman performed at adequate or superior levels in some metrics; however, they fell short in a few metrics.

University website quality comparison by using non-parametric statistical test: a case study from Malaysia

This research conducts some tests to measure the quality of Malaysian University website via web diagnostic tools online. We propose a methodology for determining and evaluating the best university website based on many criteria of website quality, consist of linear weightage model (LWM), analytical hierarchy process, fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) and new hybrid model (NHM). This NHM has been implemented using combination of LWM and FAHP to generate the weights for the criteria which are better and more fairly preference. The result of this study confirmed that most of the Malaysian University websites are neglecting performance and quality criteria. By applying hybrid model between LWM and FAHP approach for website evaluation has resulted in significant acceleration of implementation, raised the overall effectiveness with respect to the underlying methodology and ultimately enabled more efficient and significantly equal or better procedure compared with other methods.

A comparison of Asian e-government websites quality: using a non-parametric test

This research conducts tests to measure the quality of e-government websites of five Asian countries via web diagnostic tools online. We propose a methodology for determining and evaluating the best e-government website based on many criteria of website quality, consisting of linear weightage model (LWM), analytical hierarchy process (AHP), fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP), and one new hybrid model (NHM). This NHM has been implemented using combination FAHP and LWM to generate the weights for the criteria which are better and more fairly preferred. The results of this study confirmed that most Asian websites are neglecting in performance and quality criteria. By applying the hybrid model approach it has resulted in significant acceleration of implementation, raised the overall effectiveness and enabled more efficient procedure. To compare the ranking methods, a combination of Friedman’s test and Dunn’s multiple comparison procedure is adopted. When applied to the methods presented here, these tests indicate that AHP, FAHP, and Hybrid method methods perform better than LWM.

A comparison of Asian airlines websites quality: using a non-parametric test

This research conducts test to measure the quality of Asian airlines website via web diagnostic tools online. We propose a methodology for determining and evaluating the best airlines website based on many criteria of website quality, consist of linear weightage model (LWM), analytical hierarchy process, fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) and one new hybrid model (NHM). This NHM has been implemented using combination FAHP and LWM. The result of this study confirmed most of Asian websites are neglecting performance and quality criteria. By applying hybrid model approach has resulted in significant acceleration of implementation, raised the overall effectiveness and enabled more efficient procedure. To compare ranking methods, a combination of Friedman’s test and Dunn’s multiple comparison procedure is adopted.

Performance evaluation on quality of Asian e-government websites – an AHP approach

The concept of website quality is consisting of many criteria: quality of service perspective, a user perspective, a content perspective or indeed a usability perspective. This research conducts some tests to measure the quality of e-government website of five Asian countries via web diagnostic tools online. We propose a methodology for determining and evaluate the best e-government sites based on many criteria of website quality. The approach has been implemented using analytical hierarchy process (AHP), the proposed model uses the AHP pairwise comparisons and the measure scale to generate the weights for the criteria which are much better and guarantee more fairly preference of criteria. Applying AHP approach for website evaluation has resulted in significant acceleration of implementation, raised the overall effectiveness with respect to the underlying methodology and ultimately enabled more efficient procedure. The result of this study confirmed that the e-government websites of Asian are neglecting performance and quality criteria.

Integrated views of e-government website usability: perspectives from users and web diagnostic tools

It has now become evident that information and communication technologies (ICTs) are pertinent for economic prosperity, which has led to governments around the globe to offer online government products and services. For this purpose, websites offering information from governments to citizens and interaction between governments and citizens using static web pages and web portals are considered to be essential. This paper reports the results of an evaluative study of a cross-section of the e-government portals using a common set of performance metrics and web diagnostic engines and empirical evidence gathered from a diverse range of respondents. Results show that not only are there wide variations in the spectrum of information and services provided by these portals, but that significant work still needs to be undertaken to make the portals examples of 'best practice' e-government services.