Evaluation of the web usability of the University of Cagliari portal: an eye tracking study

A web portal is one of the main tools used by companies, institutions and individual citizens to make information available to anyone. Designing a portal that has good usability means allowing an average user to find the information he needs as soon as possible. The objective of this work is to evaluate the web usability of the portal of the University of Cagliari, using the eye tracking technology. High school and university students were asked to perform specific tasks within the portal. The results were evaluated through a quantitative analysis of the time and number of fixations required to complete each task, as well as a qualitative analysis of heat maps and gaze plots representing participants' fixations. The analysis has allowed to (i) detect a high efficiency for most of the web pages, (ii) highlight the most critical elements of the portal and (iii) suggest the most appropriate changes to be made.