How do Webmasters Explain Website Quality?

This paper investigates how webmasters in first prize winning companies of web awards explain website quality. In order to gain insights into website quality descriptions, we held qualitative interviews with webmasters in eight Norwegian companies. The outcome is grounded theory models of how webmasters representing four ideal types of websites explain website quality. By using the left side of the DeLone and McLean IS Success Model which captures information quality, system quality and service quality, this paper discusses the webmasters’ explanations of website quality. The aim is to shed light on the diversity of explanations that webmasters may have, and to explore the potential of the webmaster perspective on website quality. The results show that webmasters explain website quality differently, depending on the type of website, with user friendliness being a repeated key word. Information quality is assessed at different levels, as are the types of services provided for users. Although webmasters seems to have users’ interests in mind, user-satisfaction requirements appear to be absent from a webmaster’s perspective. The paper concludes that there is not a clearly expressed relation between the degree of investments in user driven activities in order to improve website quality and winning a national website award. A discussion of the use of quality criteria and evaluation methods for website quality is given. The paper ends with implications for practitioners and academia.