Usability Evaluation on Websites

As the development of information society, the use of the Internet and other forms of information and communications technology becomes increasingly popular. Nowadays, millions of websites have been built and placed into service. More and more designers have begun to focus their attention on whether these websites can be used easily. Therefore, how to measure the usability is an important question in website design. With the help of evaluating methods, designers can understand their users better, and make their works meet their users' needs. The quality of the usability evaluation lies on evaluating techniques. This paper describes how to use these methods to evaluate a website. First, the common evaluating procedure is introduced in this paper. Secondly some usability evaluation techniques are introduced, which are usability testing, heuristic evaluation, cognitive walkthrough, focus group, thinking aloud and questionnaires. In the end, how to use these methods will be discussed.