Quality parameters evaluation of Indian websites and design framework for website performance enhancement

Abstract

This research focuses on two main pillars of website quality, namely, accessibility and usability. The various domain websites were evaluated on the quality parameters using various automated tools and manual testing. The first domain selected was the higher education institutions websites. In the study sixty one websites of institutions affiliated with Uttarakhand technical university were evaluated on selected accessibility and usability parameters using automated tools. The second domain chosen was the website of the service delivery portal of the Indian government. In this study the 164 websites were evaluated using several different web based evaluation tools to find out how well they scored in terms of various quality parameters. The websites suffer from poor navigation structure as they contain many deadlinks. The accessibility test shows that the websites did not comply with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2. They are not accessible to people with disabilities and did not support accessing the websites through assistive agents. The next domain selected for the study was tour and travel. The websites of nine airline companies were assessed on the quality parameters, which also failed most of the usability and accessibility tests. Next the websites of state of Indias official state tourism websites were assessed on the various parameters of usability and accessibility. The last part of this thesis proposes a quality framework based on the usability and accessibility parameters identified. The website developers should follow the framework for the quality enhancement of their site. This research work can be utilized by policymakers as an evaluation guide to future digital policies of India so that India can become a truly universally digitally accessible country. newline newline newline