Usability evaluation of websites of Libya state universities

Due to the acceleration of technological development in the field of communications and the Internet and in view of the interest of large educational institutions such as universities and others to increase their competitive capabilities by creating distinctive websites in their visual aesthetics and the possibility of using them from the viewpoint of the end user and providing good services to students and visitors, the developers were interested in this aspect in order to gain the satisfaction and confidence of users Targeted. Despite the recent huge increase in the number of websites of Libyan public universities, their low usability leads to a failure to meet the needs and expectations of visitors. Therefore, the aim of this study was to assess the usability of three Libyan public universities and to identify common issues related to the advantages and disadvantages found in these university websites. Two methods of evaluation were used in this study, the first method was user testing and satisfaction questionnaire, and the second method was Nielsen's heuristics evaluation (Expert review). Both methods used the same selected public universities with different participants and assessed website usability from a user's perspective. Usability results also revealed that selected Libyan university websites suffer from many usability problems and the results of this study have practical implications for universities so that university web developers can design more usable websites. This study is also one of the first attempts to assess levels of Usability in the Libyan public universities.