Website structure improvement: Quadratic assignment problem approach and ant colony meta-heuristic technique

Website usability and link structure analysis has become a major concern for companies, since more online services are going to be offered through websites. While different usability assessment methods has been proposed and used in the previous studies, we use Graph theory definitions to model the website. The paper then discusses the extension of application of quadratic assignment problem (QAP) method in the context of usability and uses this method to improve website link structure and navigation. Practicing our proposed method, a real case of Iranian Civil Aviation Organization (CAO) is put forward and discussed. Doing so, ant colony meta-heuristic technique is employed to solve the problem. Findings show that the method is promising and practical in improving website structure and usability, as it produces alternative layout and improvement strategies along with of its pioneering in applying the rich literature of QAP in solving the problems of navigation in websites. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.