Content Evaluation Criteria for General Websites: Analysis and Comparison

Presently almost anyone can publish a website. The interest in using the Web as a competitive weapon by individuals, businesses, and governments is increasing as well. Little has addressed the applicability and implementation of several published website evaluation criteria. This work is an attempt to develop a comprehensive set of evaluation criteria for general websites in line with international standards for website design. The proposed evaluation criteria are used to analyze the top 10 websites in UAE in order to measure their compliance with the developed criteria. The proposed criteria can be used as a benchmark of website quality and compliance. DOI: 10.4018/ijom.2012070102 22 International Journal of Online Marketing, 2(3), 21-38, July-September 2012 Copyright © 2012, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. (Apostolou & Economides, 2008), ministries (Ataloglou & Economides, 2009). Examining the Webby Awards 2000 data set to understand which factors distinguish highly-rated websites from those that receive poor ratings, Smith, Hear, and Ivory evaluated 3000 websites based on six criteria (Sinha, Hearst, & Ivory, 2001): content, structure & navigation, visual design, functionality, interactivity, and over all experience. They found that the content was by far the best predictor of the overall experience, while visual design was the worst predictor of the overall experience. Targeting Web page designers; Web masters; business owners; and researchers, Viehland and Zhao determined how well New Zealand’s top 50 Web sites were following international homepage guidelines based on twelve criteria in three categories – web page design, navigation, and usability (Viehland & Zhao, 2008a). A Web Assessment Index (WAI) was developed and provided an integrated approach for evaluating websites based on four criteria: accessibility, speed, navigability, and content which were objectively evaluated and each website was given a score out of a 100 (Kargar, 2011; Mateos, Mera, Miranda Gonzalez, & Lopez, 2001; Miranda Gonzalez & Banegil Palacios, 2004). Ooi, Ho, and Amri used a list of 10 criteria to evaluate three education service providers’ websites in Malaysia (Ooi, Ho, & Amri, 2010). The ten criteria used were: source, layout, accessibility, speed, navigability, content, accuracy, level of details, current information, and appearance. They adopted a binary scoring indicating the existence or non-existence of a criterion. Using six Website evaluation dimensions (Pallas & Economides, 2008) developed museum’s site evaluation framework (MUSEF). The framework used website content, presentation, usability, interactivity, e-service, and technical as its evaluation dimensions. Each dimension contained a number of specific criteria. Sonoma State University developed a set of criteria to evaluate website content (Sonoma State University, 2005). Nielson presented evaluation criteria for websites’ interface design (Nielson Norman Group, 2006). Several other authors designed sets of criteria for evaluating website features, such as currency, navigation, authority, accuracy, and coverage (Fisher, Burstein, Lynch, & Lazarenko, 2008; Hackett & Parmanto, 2009; Kargar, 2011; Kim & Jung, 2007; Lituchy & Barra, 2008; O’ Reilly & Flood, 2008; Schmidt, Cantallops, & dos Santos, 2008; Yang & Chan, 2008). The quality of a Website is difficult to define and capture but designers, developers, and users feel it when it is missing. Website quality depends on three sets of factors: task-related, performance-related, and development-related factors (Brajnik, 2001). Task-related factors include navigability, presentation quality, and appeal, content and function adequacy. Performance-related factors include response time, transaction throughput, reliability, robustness. Development-related factors include code complexity, code reliability, code flexibility, portability, page coupling, and modifiability. The Website quality evaluation method (QEM) proposed by Olsina, Godoy, Lafuente, and Rossi (1999) is one of the main approaches to assess websites. Misic and Johnson used four factors of Website effectiveness (function, navigation, content, and contact information) to benchmark the Website of the College of Business at Northern Illinois University against 45 other business schools (Misic & Johnson, 1999). WebQual is another benchmarking methodology for measuring the Website quality (Barnes & Vidgen, 2000, 2003). It used an index that gives an overall rating of a Website based on user perceptions of quality weighted by importance. WebQual uses three dimensions: usability, information quality, and service orientation. A summary of the website evaluation frameworks is given in Table 1. We must distinguish between manual and automated approaches for analyzing and evaluating websites. Manual evaluation relies on the judgments of individual analysts on certain websites. Speed, rigorous structure, and abundance of data are assured when evaluation is done automatically with software tools (Bauer & Scharl, 2000). 16 more pages are available in the full version of this document, which may be purchased using the "Add to Cart" button on the product's webpage: www.igi-global.com/article/content-evaluation-criteriageneral-websites/69976?camid=4v1 This title is available in InfoSci-Journals, InfoSci-Journal Disciplines Business, Administration, and Management, InfoSci-Digital Marketing, E-Business, and E-Services eJournal Collection, InfoSci-Journal Disciplines Communications and Social Science. Recommend this product to your librarian: www.igi-global.com/e-resources/libraryrecommendation/?id=2