Abstract
Currently, almost every organization has a Web site to
inform, communicate with, and/or sell products to customers.
Nevertheless, a recent study shows that only62%of the Dutch
population can find the information sought for on anyWeb site
of the Dutch government (van Deursen & van Dijk, 2008).
Even more worrying, only one quarter of the respondents
managed to find out whether or not they could object to
particular governmental decisions. It turned out that using
a search engine like Google provides a higher chance of
successfully finding the required information than consulting
the relevant governmental Web site. Apparently, users
of these Web sites experience great difficulties when navigating
them in their search for particular information. They
seem to become overwhelmed with the number and variety of
features when navigating complexWeb sites (Biswas, 2004;
Stump,Athaide,&Joshi, 2002) and then suffer from information
overload (Miller, 1956), leading to confusion and erratic
search behavior (Trice & Treacy, 1998). These results indicate
that the usability of the investigated Web sites is rather
low for their intended customers
| Original language | Undefined/Unknown |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 495-504 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology |
| Volume | 61 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2010 |