Arab World English Journal, August 2015 Bejaia University, International Conference Proceedings – 2015 Pp.148 – 163
An Exploratory Study of the Effectiveness University Website of Mohamed Lamine Debaghine-Sétif-2-
Ikhlas Gherzouli
Department of English Language and Literature,
Mohamed Lamine Debaghine (MLD)-Setif-2- University, Algeria
Abstract:
All universities around the world focus their time and staff resources for improving their websites in an attempt to mark their presence through the web. Having a university website, which provides easy access to necessary information for people, as students, teachers, researchers, and administrators, has become vital to any institution, and should thus respond to their needs. The success of any web site is partly related to how effective it is. An effective website should provide great experiences to its users such as: interactivity, attractive design, informative content and ease of use. Among these requirements, website’s design is the first thing that captures the users’ attention. A clear understanding of how best to design effective websites is therefore imperative. The available literature on websites’ effectiveness remains little and much more user-centric. As a matter of fact, this study tries to see into what web designers of MLD University consider as important attributes of effectiveness. For this, only one evaluation method was used: a checklist handed to members of the team in charge of the university website design.
Key words: university website, website effectiveness, website design.