Web development is different from traditional software development. Like in all software applications, usability is one of the core components of web applications. Usability engineering and web engineering are rapidly growing fields. Companies can improve their market position by making their products and services more accessible through usability engineering. User testing is often skipped when approaching deadline. This is very much true in case of web application development. Achieving good usability is one of the main concerns of web development. Several methods have been proposed in literature for evaluating web usability. There is not yet an agreement in the software development community about which usability evaluation method is more useful than another. Doing extensive usability evaluation is usually not feasible in case of web development. On the other hand unusable website increases the total cost of ownership. Improved usability is one of the major factors in achieving satisfaction up to a sufficient level. It can be achieved by utilizing appropriate usability evaluation method, but cost-effective usability evaluation tools are still lacking. In this thesis we study usability inspection and usability testing methods. Furthermore, an effort has been made in order to find appropriate usability evaluation method for web applications during product development and in this effort we propose appropriate web usability evaluation method which is based on observation of the common opinion of web industry.
There is no standard framework or mechanism of selecting usability evaluation method for software development. In the context of web development projects where time and budget are more limited than traditional software development projects, it becomes even harder to select appropriate usability evaluation method. Certainly it is not feasible for any web development project to utilize multiple usability inspection method and multiple usability testing methods during product development. The good choice can be the combinational method composed of one usability inspection method and one usability testing method. The thesis has contributed by identifying those usability evaluation methods which are common in literature and current web industry