Web Sites Communication Performance: A Methodological Approach

The web user’s behavior can be affected from the website quality i.e shortly speaking from the fact the website allows for an efficient spread of information. Therefore there is a need of having website quality measurements and of obtaining information on how to improve the communication performance of a website. Usability is in principle the measurement for evaluating the ease of use of a particular website. With usability measurement two problems arise: 1) all usability evaluation tools  don’t take into account some heuristics  2) a website which respects usability criteria, could yet be useless since a usable tool in our opinion should allow for convergence between user’s expectations and owner’s goals. In our paper we set up a stepwise procedure that starting from a usability evaluation, using auxiliary variables profiles websites according to the economic profile of the owner. This procedure allows for the identification of usability criteria that take into account the owner’s profile and the website characteristics. The procedure is applied in a prototypal way to the Italian municipalities’ websites.