Using the Analytic Hierarchical Process to Create a Single Usability Score for Website Interfaces

Abstract

We propose a new approach to create a single score metric to compare and rank the usability of website interfaces. The approach is based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process. We built the model and validated it using four usability studies, two of which are on a manufacturing firm website and the other two are on a service firm website. The results revealed a difference in domain between manufacturing and service. Still, this approach to creating a single score for usability is new in the literature for website evaluation and can help explain the ranking of website interfaces to non-experts. This is especially true for clients with the need to repeat website evaluations yearly or with clients who need a comparative analysis for their website against others in the same business. Future research is necessary to develop this approach further and validate it using a more comprehensive data set from an identical domain.