Evaluation of Web Portals

Abstract

Evaluation of Web portals is an important issue in Web engineering, taking into consideration the Internet explosion and the exponential growth of Web sites and online information sources. Web portals present nowadays a significant variety of features, complexity of structure, and plurality of offered services. It is therefore important to adopt evaluation frameworks that go beyond the simple assessment of the different operational aspects of Web portals, and that address issues such as quality monitoring and analysis of the assessment results, in the direction of interpreting the factors that affect users’ satisfaction. Moreover, there is also a need for supportive evaluation methodologies that can integrate the results of the assessment of every portal aspect being evaluated, and provide measurable, synthesized results to the key decision makers (being either those financially supporting the service or those involved in the design, development, operation, and/or exploitation of the service) aiming to facilitate the improvement of the offered services.