Abstract

The extent to which web sites in Malaysian and Australian universities comply with usability guidelines of theU.S Department of Health and Human Services was analysed. In order to discover the reasons some websitescomply with more guidelines on certain features than others, cultural dimensions in relation to usability of eachcountry were also analysed. Content analysis was employed to measure the usability compliance. Twenty-nineguidelines were selected and twenty university web sites from each country were randomly selected. Thefindings showed that the trend of standardization was emerging for language and organization category.However, there was also a clear evidence of the need for website designers to consider the impact of localculture as some cultural reflections in terms of high/low context orientation were noted. In terms of culture,unexpectedly, Australian university websites depicted a higher uncertainty avoidance index. This study will bean addition to web design literature and facilitate universities and individuals to develop effective strategies toelevate the image of universities in the global context. Future studies should examine other cultural dimensionssuch as collectivism versus individualism and power distance. Future studies may also use interview method togain an in-depth analysis of factors which influence the cultural projection in university websites.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.