A quality gaps roadmap for a website usability process

Abstract

Designing usable websites becomes a subject of major importance with the growth of e-commerce applications and the wide range of offers the web suggests. To reach potential customers and maintain their loyalty under the conditions of high competition, organizations need to constantly control usability of the websites representing them. In this paper we present a systematic approach to usability, based on a roadmap, that aims to overcome quality gaps appearing in website lifecycle. To address these gaps it is possible to adopt different techniques. Our solution consists in identifying the quality gaps and suggesting the techniques most adequate to overcome a given gap. The result is a multi-step process for determining and realizing the improvements and re-engineering of the website. We illustrate our approach on the website of a tourist destination. © 2008 IEEE.