WEBSITE REVIEW & RECOMMENDATION

PORTS AUTHORITY TONGA

AF302: INFORMATION SYSTEMS

UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC | FLEXI 2017

Group Members: ‘Amoni Taumoe‘anga (S11113541)

Tonga Ports Authority was established under Ports Authority Act 1998 as a corporate body to
promote, encourage, and assist in the development of commercially viable and efficient ports in
Tonga. Their major responsibility is to serve the country’s vital international trades through a
broad range of cargo handling and logistics services. Their vision and mission is to be “The
authority is dedicated to excellence through quality – creating value for customers, employees,
and Government through continuous improvement, technology, and operational expertise. The
Authority will be the best managed Government organization from 1st July 1999 in terms of
effectiveness and efficiency.” Because of the importance for the people of Tonga this
organization, the information systems are the helpful tool to use by Tonga Port Authority.

Our focus is on the Websites strength and weaknesses of the websites to the Tonga Port
Authority. We manage to gather our data through internet searching, interview and
questionnaire. We will start from discussion the strength then weaknesses of websites to the
Tonga Port Authority, and also make a recommendation on how to improve the websites of this
organization in the future.

Strengths of the Ports Authority Tonga’s Website

Initially, the ability to reach wider audience is one of the most obvious beneficial qualities of
PAT’s website. A significant strategy an organization operate to maximize their profit, is to get
customer interested and recognizes their products or services and this relies on their websites
[ CITATION Ber13 \l 1033 ]. An interview with Mr. Langi, IT manager of the PAT revealed “To
evaluate number of users on their website, it measures based on the hits counter blog displaying
on their home page, allowing them to approximate visitors to their website, literally a 1121453
quantities of article view hits” [ CITATION Lan17 \l 1033 ]. The purpose of having a business
website is to connecting their customers with the organization whether they are internationally or
locally. PAT’s website offers various business information and links which inform web users to
discover their services provided. For example, “Forms/Application” options available to
international customers in any geographical location to download and submit it online for an
authorization of cruise ships, yachts and vessels entries to Nuku‘alofa Ports . Not only that, the

1
website also reaching out to the public and local people through providing update information
about wharfs conditions and PAT’s latest news headline which may persuade more customers.
Therefore, able to reach wider audiences contribute to PAT’s website well known and increase
number customer relationship and collaboration with the organization.

Subsequently, information quality is also one of the significant efforts identify from PAT’s
website since it is a source of value to customers. Information quality refers to relevance,
accuracy and usefulness of information provided on website claim that it can significantly
influence customer attitudes and interaction [ CITATION Hua12 \l 1033 ]. As Mr. Fifita response, “I
find PAT’s website useful as it keep us updated information about wharf operation and with
their news headlines, we could exactly know what is going on within the organization”
[ CITATION Fif17 \l 1033 ]. Holding quality information improves reliable and trustable of the
organization responsibilities and the interaction of their business documents dissemination. For
example, in PAT’s website consists of valuable information such as forms and applications, the
environment conditions, ports’ regulations, annual reports, latest headlines with visualization to
support the accuracy of the information. Therefore, information quality could identify needs,
direct targeted services and create proficiencies in the organization responsibilities.

Furthermore, possibly the most strong feature on PAT’s website is its well-designed navigation
structure. A clear navigation structure provide suitable direction for user to discover what they
want and at the same time not giving many information so that they become overloaded
[ CITATION Muh12 \l 1033 ] . According to Ms. Lokotui, “Visit to a website, we are looking for a
specific task and interested information we may need to find. The PAT’s website is easy to
navigate as it is organize in effective ways and it simply direct the whole information on the web
page in just a single page”[ CITATION Lok17 \l 1033 ]. PAT’s website is very simple with calm
navigation which is usually much more user-friendly with clear contents. For instance, PAT’s
website directly connect its users at their home page which is entirely provide selections on the
main menu lists with some sub-menu and other links to Facebook, PAT webmail and latest
headlines. Although a website can display a great variety of information, web designer must
understand the significance of displaying the only necessary information on their web page in
order for internet users can easily click on the information they want and simply access to
information they concern.

2
On the other hand, we will now discuss the weaknesses that we encounter when we study the
Port Authority Tonga’s (PAT) website. And all these weaknesses will lead to a business failure
and this will influence the major goal of the business.

Weaknesses of the Ports Authority Tonga’s Website

Firstly, one of the most potential weakness in PAT’s website concern with domain-feature of its
website which is vulnerable to a variety security and privacy such as phishing, a form of identity
theft and a major threat. “The creating of fake e-business websites that look similar to real
authentic websites in terms of domain names and web content, once the deceived consumer
mistakenly log into a phishing website their user name and password can be stolen and used by
criminals to log into the authentic website for illegal financial gain” [ CITATION Zha14 \l 1033 ] .
The URL name of the PAT’s website (http://www.portsauthoritytonga.com) actually used the
“.com” domain feature. As a responses from Ms. Vailea, an IT manager for Tonga Ministry of
Education she explained “PAT’s website domain name is not recognizable as real authentic
website of a Tongan government public enterprise as it using .com domain feature whereas it is
too general and defenseless from hackers and threats. A specific domain for a Tongan website is
the .to which are reliable and permissions are only allowed from Tonga Ministry of
Information”[ CITATION Vai17 \l 1033 ]. However, PAT’s website have greater possibility of
exposed as anyone from outside could commit to phishing attacks on their website which may
cause a financial loss to the organization and level of reliability no longer trustworthy to its
customers.

Secondly, website security level is not secure enough to avoid hackers from unauthorized
access the PAT’s important document available in their website. This happens when the website
was designed using java script (refer to the PAT website source code) when their employee
register in the website, which someone with IT expert skills can access the Port Authority Tonga
(PAT) important document in the website. Because they can disable java in their own PC and
then directly login and access documents available on the site without proper registration, said

3
Pateli Vailea. From our point of view it is true that security level of a website that contain
important documents of that business require high level security to avoid unauthorized access.

Moreover, PAT’s website is not user friendly as some of the links in the website does not
display any content when clicked on it. This might influence the user friendly of the Port
Authority Tonga’s website as some main user of the business might loss interest in using the
website, when they click on some links and it does not display any content. Because the
stakeholder of PAT doesn’t not get what they are looking for such as the link to “Safety, Security
& Access”, “Protect Environment” and “Harbour Conditions” does not display any content when
we click on it. This clearly shows that PAT’s website does not violate user friendly feature of an
enterprise website. But user friendly of the website is so far important for a website so that a
“Good navigation is intuitive and simple, and makes it easy for visitors to quickly find what they
need” [ CITATION Bra16 \l 3081 ] , with that it is important to have all links work well and contains
a content once the user click on it.

As we have mention above, there are some weaknesses that we have identified from the Port
Authority Tonga website and now we are going to discuss some innovative recommendation for
their website to be improved and avoid those weaknesses from influencing their business goal.

Recommendation to Improve Ports Authority Tonga’s Website

Firstly, since it is very important for any organization’s website to be trustworthy and to avoid
phising attack, we suggest that PAT should use website domain name specifically for Tongan
websites such as the “.to”. In order to make PAT’s website recognizable as one of the Tongan
government’s public enterprise, this innovation will minimize misunderstanding from its users
also increase the reputation of the organization to the public. Because every country claimed own
domain name to be used by any enterprise in that country. The changes required that the PAT’s
website have to change from the domain “http://www.portsauthoritytonga.com” to
“https://portsathoritytonga.to”. So when PAT use .to as their domain name in their website
uniform resource locator (URL) for safety purpose from the hackers.

4
Secondly, the website designer of PAT should substitute java script by php script in order for
their important documents to be secure and cannot be access by someone who is not a member of
their website. Talanoa Langi the website designer mention that their meeting documents is
available on their website for their employee to access it when they are on another country, with
using of php script it secures that document; because user have to login from their PC and also
confirm with the server before they access it. From our research we found out that “Using a
database allows the server to keep track of a participant who may perform many tasks over a
period of time” [ CITATION ANJ05 \l 3081 ] so that every login of the Port Authority Tonga website
users must keep in track to avoid hackers. So business matters discussed in their meeting cannot
access by any unauthorized user.

Moreover, to have a user friendly website they should remove those links that have no content if
they did not have some information to put on it so that their website will capture the users
interest to consider their website a user friendly website. This will be a good picture of the Port
Authority Tonga’s service when their website complies user friendly. As the cruise ship and
some sailing vessel from overseas use their website to access their application form for their
arrival here in Tonga.

In addition to that, we recommend that they should put an online forum in their website so that
they get feedbacks and complaints from their major stakeholder; “Every organization should
understand the importance of receiving consumer complaints as a form of feedback and to
perform better as an organization.” [ CITATION Ann16 \l 3081 ]. With that the customer complaint
will contribute to the PAT achieving their business goal and also it contributes to the enterprise
reputation, this will help PAT perform better as a business that reach wider audience.

Conclusion

To conclude with, Tonga Port Authority has its own website design, and that website both have a
strength and weaknesses. It has its own vision and mission as mention on the introduction, in
order to achieve their goals the IT strategies will support their achievement include websites
design. Based on our findings through the method of data gathering we do, we managed to
identify the importance or the cooperative of the good websites to the business intelligent. Like

5
what we have found out that importance of the websites, is that it has the ability to reach out to a
wider audience. It helps provide qualitative information which will contribute to the decision
making of the users. Based on our research, the designation of the Port Authority Tonga was well
structure. There are many weaknesses of this but we choose the major weaknesses, and we also
find out the way to improve that vulnerable. In order to reduce the risk of cyber threat and cyber-
attack, domain feature is a vulnerable if this organization do not start act then it will be
negligence. Secondly is their security is not secure enough, based on our judgments. Lastly is
that their websites is not user friendly. If anyone asks us we choose one, either this websites is a
vulnerable to the business or it support the strategies of the business, then we choose it supports
the strategies of the business which will be support the business intelligent. Not only it has more
strength but also the risk is that it can be solving quickly and Tonga Port Authority are the useful
tools for the achievements of this organization.

6
References

ANJA S. GÖRITZ, M. H. (2005). Generic HTML Form Processor: A versatile PHP script to save Web-
collected data into a MySQL database. California, Germany.

Barot, B. (2004). METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ANALYZING DOMAIN NAME REGISTRATIONS. In
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION (p. 2). New York.

Beri, B., & Singh, P. (2013). Web Analytics: Increasing Website's Usability and Conversion Rate.
International Journal of Computer Applications, 35.

Fifita, K. (2017, January 19). Quality of Information Provided by Ports Authority Tonga's Website. (K.
Likiafu, Interviewer)

Huang, Z., & Benyocef, M. (2012). From e-commerce to social commerce: A close look at design
features. Electronic Commerce Reseach and Applications, 246-259.

Langi, T. (2017, January 18). Website Review and Recommendation. (S. Lautaha, Interviewer)

Lokotui, E. (2017, January 23). How A Well Structured Navigation Webpage Influence PAT Website. ('.
Taumoe'anga, Interviewer)

Muhtaseb, R., Lakiotaki, K., & Masatsinis, N. (2012). Applying a Multicriteria Satisfaction Analysis
Approach Based on User Preferences to Rank Usability Attributes in E-tourism Websites. Journal
of theoretical and applied electronic commerce research.

Shorr, B. (2016, December 18). Forbes. Retrieved from www.forbes.com

Vailea, P. (2017, January 21). Domain Features of PAT Websites Reputation. (L. Faka'osi, Interviewer)

Wessel, A. (2016). MASTER THESIS – RESEARCH ARTICLE. Investigating the influence of website design
and message clarity on consumers’ response in the online complaint process, 3.

Zhang, D., Yan, Z., Jiang, H., & Kim, T. (2014). A domain-feature enhanced classification model for
detection of Chinese phishing e-Business websites. Information & Management, 845 - 853.