Khalid Al-Omar, King Abdulaziz University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Web usability is a significant factor in increasing user satisfaction, performance, trust, and loyalty. Web usability is particularly important for people who mostly depend on the website and for one reason or other cannot visit an institution, such as online distance education students. Accordingly, universities and educational websites need to determine the types of usability problems they have on their websites. However, far too little attention has been paid to providing detailed information regarding the types of specific usability problems that could be found on e-learning websites in general, and specifically, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The aim of this paper is to study and analyse the usability of university websites that offer distance education courses in the KSA. A total of 12 universities in Saudi Arabia were considered, which include 11 affiliated and one private university. The analysis of the data represents the level of usability of distance education websites. Results reveal that in Saudi Arabia, distance education websites are reliable, but violate basic usability guidelines.

University Websites, Credibility, Trustworthiness, Online Trust, Website Design, Saudi Arabia, Distance Education