Evaluating the effects of responsive design on the usability of academic websites in the pandemic

Responsive design allows users to benefit from the web page without having to worry about screen size and resolution. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of responsive design on usability. For this purpose, a questionnaire consisting of a five-point Likert was applied to university students. According to the results, it was seen that 99.2% of university students had smart phones and used smart phones to connect to internet with a rate of 91.3%. It was observed that the participants' attitudes towards responsive design did not differ according to gender, and students in the 24–26 age group had more desire to use responsive design. And, university students' attitudes towards responsive design did not differ according to the Internet access method. It was found that 38% of the participants had a daily internet usage rate of 4–5 h and they used social media the most. Ease of use has been identified as the most preferred feature (Avg = 3.67/5, 73.4%) of usability in responsive design by evaluating dimensions central tendency measures. With regression analysis, responsive design explains 74.7% of the change in effectiveness (R(2) = 0.747) among the usability dimensions. With regression analysis, 91.5% of usability can be explained with the responsive design (R(2) = 0.915). Usability and responsive design (r = 0.92, p < 0.01) were both found to be positively correlated. It can be said that the academic university websites developed with responsive design are preferred by university students in the pandemic and this has increased usability and effectiveness.