Evaluating the Architecture of Qom university Website from an Information Architecture perspective

Objective: Today, websites have become one of the main tools for providing services to users, and university websites act as a new communication path between universities, students and faculty. Websites are designed for any purpose, their information should be usable and accessible for users. How well a website meets the needs and expectations of users and customers is related to the quality of a website. Therefore, quantitative and qualitative evaluation of websites is one of the essentials for the development and promotion of an organizational website. The purpose of the present research is to evaluate the website of Qom University based on information architecture indicators, in order to know the status and qualitative review of the website. Regular review and evaluation of websites from structural and content aspects, followed by identification of their strengths and weaknesses, will provide a suitable strategy for policy making and decision making.

Methodology: In this research, the website of Qom University was investigated using the direct observation method and the designed evaluation list used in Siddiqi's study to evaluate the information architecture of the website in June 1402. This tool evaluates the four subsystems of website organization, tagging, navigation and search according to three basic aspects of information architecture, i.e. context, user and content. The questions of the evaluation list were designed in two parts with descriptive questions and yes and no questions according to the presence or absence of the investigated characteristics. The checklist was prepared based on the indicators and evaluation criteria in the form of tables and was completed by the researcher.

Results: The website is efficient and can be successful in responding to the information needs of users if its information architecture is favorable. The results of these lists showed that Qom University's website scored 22 points out of 37 points in the information organization section, 30 points out of 57 points in the labeling section, 42 points out of 78 points in the navigation section, and 5 points out of the 78 points in the search section. He has obtained a total of 46. Therefore, compared to the ideal state, Qom University's website scored 64% in the organization section, 45% in the tagging section, 81% in the navigation section, and 10% in the search field. Good in organization and navigation, and finally very poor in search.

Conclusion: Websites are a suitable tool for communication between organizations and their audiences. This research tries to show the effectiveness of this method for use in similar cases by presenting a systematic evaluation in a case study for the Qom University website while introducing the strengths and weaknesses of this website. Based on the findings of the research in the component of the organization system with a good condition, the weaknesses of the website in the organization plan were more of the type of organization structure, which is the general organization plan of the university website based on the organizational chart and not having an alphabetical organization plan and not using the audience-oriented organization plan and social organization Among its weaknesses is in organization. Although the website navigation system tells the user what website he is on, it does not clearly show all the levels that have been navigated. The main navigation system of the website must be equipped with the local system. The website search system must be established. Also, adding the recommender system to the website search system is one of the methods that can be used to improve the performance of the search system. According to the findings of the research, following the inclusion of the alphabetical organization plan, using image tags, adding an alphabetical index for the website content, the possibility of advanced search and ranking the search results will definitely be fruitful in improving the quality of the website.