Website evaluation measures, website user engagement and website credibility for Municipal website

Abstract

This paper attempts to explore website evaluation measures specifically for information driven website such Municipal electronic government website toward website credibility and user engagement. Despite overwhelming of information source in online environment, the role of government website as a prominent government information provider becomes less preferred. Even, rapid development and continuous assessment been done by the government bodies to enhance and make utilize their website by the users, issues such usability problem, low popularity ranking and less user engagement still been reported. Therefore, the first part of this article reviews on existing assessment measures for websites done by scholars and also by practitioners. Then, in the second part of this article presents some finding on self evaluation of ten municipal website around Klang valley, Malaysia in term of popularity ranking and user engagement measure (bounce rate, Daily Pageviews per Visitor, and Daily Time on Site). Through related literatures reviewed, less study done previously includes overall or multiple measures for evaluation of information driven website. Estimation result of popularity ranking and user engagement percentage among municipal website also shows that there is still need some improvement to make the gateway of Malaysia electronic government become more favorable and engaging.

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WEBSITE EVALUATION MEASURES, WEBSITE USER ENGAGEMENT
AND WEBSITE CREDIBILITY FOR MUNICIPAL WEBSITE
Farrah Diana Saiful Bahry1&2, Maslin Masrom1 and Mohamad Noorman Masrek2
1Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
2Universiti Teknologi Mara, Shah Alam, Malaysia
E-Mail: farrahdiana@salam.uitm.edu.my
ABSTRACT
This paper attempts to explore website evaluation measures specifically for information driven website such
Municipal electronic government website toward website credibility and user engagement. Despite overwhelming of
information source in online environment, the role of government website as a prominent government information provider
becomes less preferred. Even, rapid development and continuous assessment been done by the government bodies to
enhance and make utilize their website by the users, issues such usability problem, low popularity ranking and less user
engagement still been reported. Therefore, the first part of this article reviews on existing assessment measures for websites
done by scholars and also by practitioners. Then, in the second part of this article presents some finding on self evaluation
of ten municipal website around Klang valley, Malaysia in term of popularity ranking and user engagement measure
(bounce rate, Daily Pageviews per Visitor, and Daily Time on Site). Through related literatures reviewed, less study done
previously includes overall or multiple measures for evaluation of information driven website. Estimation result of
popularity ranking and user engagement percentage among municipal website also shows that there is still need some
improvement to make the gateway of Malaysia electronic government become more favorable and engaging.
Keywords: user engagement, website evaluation, government website, municipal website, website credibility.
INTRODUCTION
In the early 1990s, World Wide Web phenomena
been introduced and website become the main medium of
information repositories on web environment. Initially
website was static which only contains a plain hypertext
markup language (Jiang, Chen and Tao, 2012) to structure
the information and to be viewed by web user. Then
evolution start with social web (or interactive content on
the year 2000 to 2010 whereby web user can interact with
the web using keyword search tools (Ramachandran,
2014). Then, within the year 2010, a semantic web was
keep evolve and website become more meaningful in term
of information processing and delivering information
which let web user to retrieve the information based on the
data they input. Next, on the year of 2020 onwards, web
evolution been forecast to go for intelligence web where
web document such website embedded with natural
language and semantic search and concept of reasoning
been apply.
Nowadays, Website has become a crucial
medium in the online environment for presenting the
information and delivering the informational services.
Website become part of organizational strategic tool for
generating revenue ranging from corporate sector,
government ministries to municipal, nonprofit
organizational, semi-structure company and even in small
business (Poh and Adam, 2002); (Chiou, Lin and Perng,
2010). In term of government website, its play a vital role
not only as a gateway to electronic government in
accessing information and services related to specific
department and agencies, but also should become the
primer source of information for government in online
environment.
Most website studies focusing more on e-
commerce or business related website (Savoy & Salvendy
2008), (Horrall and Cavanagh, 2014) and this type of
website was easier to measure in term of transactional
based or monetary oriented (Stolz, Viermetz, and Skubacz,
2005). It differs with assessing the outcome of information
driven website that not only reliable with countable value
measure. Then in detail, classification of the website can
be based on commercial, service and mix type website
(Cebi, 2013) whereby in service website the author
differentiates between information websites and e-
government website. Information website provides users
to retrieve useful information more quickly and more
easily whereas e-government website falls under self-
service websites that provide customer with information
and certain operations or transactions. Whichever what
type of website, most assessments been done before were
to measure ease of use and information quality (Chiou, Lin
and Perng, 2010).
Specifically, on government website matters,
some studies showed local government websites
experience low frequency of use (Detlor et al., 2013) or
not reflecting more than half of citizen of the country
(Wang, 2014). One influence factors of low utilizing of
government website is information quality (Detlor et al.,
2013). In grounded study, (Wang, 2014) found usability
was the critical influential factor of website utilization in
many studies. Despite this, two repetitive issues arouse
during website evaluation were found at least one problem
of usability and accessibility such as speed, broken link
and error page not found (Latif and Masrek, 2010); (Wan
Mohd Isa, Safie, and Semsudin, 2011); (Sullivan and
Matson, 2000). This also supported by (Huang, Brooks,
and Chen, 2009) and (Dominic, 2011) that broken links

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can give bad impact for the credibility of a website. In
addition, (Sullivan and Matson, 2000) also found
correlation on both usability and accessibility either on top
rank or low rank of popular website in World Wide Web.
Thus, on the next section this paper explores on website
evaluation measures on website credibility and website
engagement, follow by determining current assessment
method done by government bodies and at the end
presenting some finding on municipal government website
popularity ranking and level of user engagement to portray
the real status of website preferred.
LITERATURE REVIEW
a) Website user engagement
Engagement been defined as a “state of being
involve, occupied, retained and intrinsically interested in
something” (Pagani and Mirabello, 2011). In the context
of online game, user engagement been defined as the
emotional, cognitive and behavioral connection that exist
at any point in time and possible over time between user
and resources (Attfield, kazai and Lalmas, 2011). They
also mentioned a successful technology must have beyond
usage and fulfilling the user investment in term of time,
attention and emotion. Some researchers relate the
definition of user engagement with user experience
(Obrien & Cairns, 2015); (Lehmann, Lalmas & Dupret,
2012) which includes characteristics such increase
attention, positive effect, sensory and intellectual
satisfaction and mastery. The total engagement
experiencing by users also known as focused immersion
measure in cognitive absorption dimension where
engagement refer to user’s full of attention with intrinsic
interest, curiosity and deep focus (Agarwal and
Karahanna, 2000).
In term of customer engagement, (Verhagen, et
al., 2015) extent the customer value measurement instead
of looking at monetary value which purchase transaction,
they go beyond the behavioral manifestations. Here,
researchers used the uses and gratification theory (UGT)
which differentiate four different benefits: cognitive
benefits, social integrative benefits, personal integrative
benefits, and hedonic benefits acquired from selection
process of medium channel to suite own needs. Indeed,
(Verhagen, et al., 2015) include characteristics of virtual
customer environments as motivating factors such as
Access to knowledge, feedbacks, Social identification, and
Social ties, Peer recognition, company recognition, Self-
expression and altruism on their study. Some researchers
had studied in the context of electronic government and
found hypothesized E-government is positively associated
with civic engagement (Stolz, Viermetz, and Skubacz,
2005).
Researchers (O’brien And Cairns, 2015);
(O’brien, And Toms, 2013); (O’brien And Toms, 2010)
did measured the same measures (perceived usability,
aesthetics, focused attention, felt involvement, novelty,
and endurability) as one framework called user
engagement scale (UES) since 2008 (O’brien, And Toms,
2008). This UES framework been assessed into different
online system such as electronic commerce, online
searching system and latest online news website.
Determining effectiveness of web content residing in the
government website (Bucci et al., 2015) also been
proposed as a factor for citizen engagement such frequent
podcasts providing updates on local initiatives and
engagement opportunities, a public consultation calendar
and map detailing all upcoming events in the area, and
extensive educational materials for those looking to
understand how local governance works and links to other
social media platforms. Below in Table-1 is the
summarization of user engagement measures from
selected articles done previously in the context of various
online systems.
Table-1. Measures to determine user engagement.

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b) Electronic government website and assessment
method
Electronic government (e-government) website
become as interface of the electronic government (Huang
and Benyoucef, 2014) that served as a windows for users
to communicate, make as single point access and
engagement medium with government. In the earlier stage,
United States model had plan the implementation of
electronic government was creating a medium to i.) online
information presentable, ii.) online service and form
transaction, iii.) system integration upon schedule and iv.)
then real-time responses (Layne and Lee, 2001). In term
of web content assessment, (Bauer and Scharl, 2000)
conceptualized content classification and evaluation into
five categories which include (1) manual classification; (2)
textual analysis; (3) statistical clustering;(4) non-
supervised neural network; and (5) supervised neural
network. In manual classification, they used
morphological chart to classifying environmental web
sites based on six (6) observable attributes which contain
strategy, organizational goal, and interactivity, wealth of
information, appearance and organizational structure of
environmental website versus either activist sites or
government sites.
In regards, there was a study to determine which
city had developed the informational world cities status as
one of the electronic government initiatives and based on
that development of informational world cities, Malaysia
also far behind from Singapore which (Mainka et al.,
2013) indicated that Kuala Lumpur as Malaysia city center
only provide 94 points of maturity level that comprising
four stages of e government maturity level: i.) information
ii.) communication iii.) transaction and iv.) participation.
At this stage of e-government development, most of the
studies were related in measuring participation of citizen
towards government services.
Therefore, most electronic government studies
look into the electronic participation (E-participation
whereby E-Participation is about nurturing civic
engagement and undisclosed anticipation of governance
through Information and Communications Technologies
(ICTs). UNPAN provide the e-Participation as a tool for
engagement and strengthened collaboration between
governments and citizens and aimed for access to
information and public services as well as to promote
participation in policy-making, both for the empowerment
of individual citizens and the benefit of society as a whole.
The study that done within a year of 2012 and early 2013
reported that Kuala Lumpur earned less than 20 points in
term of communication and transaction which is very low
as compared to other Asian country such Beijing,
Melbourne and Shenzhen. The worst scored reported by
(Mainka et al., 2013) study was zero points for the
participation. However, according to United Nations (UN)
Department of Economic and Social Affairs UNPAN,
Malaysia E-Government and E-participation indices keep
increase from 2013 to 2014 as shown in Figure-1.
Figure-1. Malaysia e-government and e-participation
index from 2008 to 2014.

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United Nation E-Government and E-participation
indices are benchmarking and ranking tools that
retrospectively measure the achievements of a class of
entities, such as government agencies or countries, in the
use of technology (Rorissa, Demissie and Pardo, 2011).
One of the measures is E-Participation Index that used to
assess the quality and usefulness of information and
services provided by a country’s government for the
purpose of engaging its citizens in public policy issues.
This index is indicative of both the capacity and the
willingness of the country’s government in encouraging
the citizens in promoting deliberative and participatory
decision-making and of the reach of its own socially
inclusive governance program.
Malaysia government effort on maintaining
sustainable and usable of electronic government website as
part of ICT strategic plan and digitalization initiatives had
improve from time to time the criteria of evaluating each
Malaysia government website. Even the criteria been
adopted from Nevada University website benchmark, the
improvement has been made to suite Malaysia cultural and
domestic needs such in content component that provide
additional information from time to time.
Star Rating Marks Definition of portals and
websites
1-Star 1-19 A static, working website with minimal
information on the agency
2-Star 20-39 A basic dynamic portal/website with a
vast array of information on the agency
3-Star 40-59 A dynamic portal/website which offers
combination of information and limited online services
4-Star 60-79 An interactive portal/website with a two-
way communication between government and citizen as
well as providing convenience to its users
5-Star 80-100 An engaging portal/website with various
options offered to citizen ranging from interaction, user-
friendliness to a variety of online services
Below in Table-2 is the current evaluation criteria of
Malaysia government website which implementing yearly
assessment name as Malaysia Government Portals and
Websites Assessment (MGPWA) which includes criteria
such site performance, functionality, content, navigation,
search, online transparency and look & feel. This
assessment has been conducting by the agency Multimedia
Development Corporations (MDeC) since 2005.
Starting on 1st July, 2014, Multimedia
Development Corporation (MDeC) had launch of self
assessment system which called Provider-Based
Evaluation (ProBE) 2015 and aligned to the American
Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). This evaluation
retains the existing criteria and sub-criteria except include
downtime measure in performance criteria. All the criteria
and sub-criteria within the seven pillars (known as
measures in research) been classified as mandatory tag or
non-mandatory tag.
Table-2. Malaysia government portals and websites
assessment (MGPWA) criteria by MDeC.
The mark been given for each seven criteria’s and
sub criteria’s assessment and the accumulated points will
be ranked each website according to star rating from one
(1) to five (5) and each star rating is defined as in Table-3.
This star rating also will ranked the website according to
classification of Ministry, State, University, Local
authority and managed portal services (MPS).
Table-3. Malaysia government portals and websites
assessment (MGPWA) star rating scale by MDeC.

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Currently, Malaysia electronic government had ranked in a
medium upper level country by UN and index of
electronic government and electronic participation shown
an increment from 2012 to 2014. Though, suppose
government website that had reach certain level of
maturity not just been use as information or content
provider, but providing numerous opportunity towards
citizen engagement, participation (Navarro, Pachón, &
Cegarraa, 2012). This gateway should align with
advancement of technology of the Internet of thing and at
the same time meet the user’s needs. Thus
multidimensional approach assessment should be taking
into consideration.
c) Website credibility
Credibility been defined as “users trust towards
the informational content on a website” (Robin and
Holmes, 2008). After all, the term credibility was initially
derived from Fogg’s works since 1999 that translate
credibility as believability and a perceived quality. ‘A
credible webpage is one whose information can be
accepted as the truth without the need to look elsewhere’
(Schwarz & Morris, 2011). Other detailed explanation,
credibility is judgments by individual that concern on
believing the communication devices, in which evaluating
website credibility for example should involves judgments
concerning to the believability of the language, visuals,
technical aspects (usability and interactivity) of the
website’s message or content, as well the source (Johnson
and Martin, 2014).
Assessing website credibility studies had been
explored and done by several researchers in several
disciplines such health science, mass communication or
news area, hotel and tourism, electronic government
(Huang and Benyoucef, 2014). Two common approach
always been adopted by city council in organizing their
website content were information oriented approach which
applies the concept of “one-stop shopping service” and the
second is the user oriented which design based on
categorizing information and services on the web
according to the needs of different user groups (Torres,
Pina and Aceretem, 2005) and this second approach been
utilize by the most Malaysia municipal website currently.
One of the credibility website study done in the
context of Malaysia was done by (Sidi and Junaidi, 2007)
who claimed supposedly People should easily visit the e-
government website to access the credible information and
through five Malaysia’s state website been reviewed based
on (Fogg et al., 2003) credibility guides, they claimed sites
appearance was important measure for credibility. Other
study had manually accessing and evaluating eighty four
European municipal website using an original Web
Assessment Index that focus on accessibility, speed,
navigability and content (Navarro, Pachón, & Cegarraa,
2012), (Miranda, Sanguino and Bañegil, 2009) and them
included specific content should provide in municipal
website. In other aspect, business model of information
content organization reviewed by (Savoy and Salvendy,
2008) found that the most important variables in
government websites are currency, timeliness, update and
accuracy and they concluded that information hierarchy
with integrated content elements ensuring credibility.
There were various credibility measures been
introduced by researchers either on the content, design or
website performance itself as seen Table-4 below:
Table-4. Credibility measures.

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Well said credibility is to extend of seeking for
information quality (Rieh & Danielson, 2007). Example of
such government website content should be accurate and
reliable information about government itself, however
maybe the content layout is a mess, or too lengthy of
textual information (Flanagin and Metzger, 2007) or
unclear of image content that could be as factors it become
less credible. Such credibility factor discussed above could
be also a denominating of user engagement due to
information driven website user’s objective always for
seeking the information through it.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This study used the method called as
investigative and self evaluative method (fogg et al.,
2003), Jayasundari and Jeyshankar, 2014) and Khatri &
Baheti, 2013). Below as in Table-5 show overall method
applied in this study which included a literature review
and data collection from automatic metric tool name
Alexa.com for evaluation ten (10) existing municipal
website. Alexa.com is automated metric tool that
collecting network traffic data directly from ISP servers
(Khoo et al., 2008). This Alexa.com automated metric tool
also known as popular for website popularity rating
(Sullivan and Matson, 2000), (Panda, Swain and Mall,
2015) that can minimize biases and provide quick preview
of popular or unpopular website. Alexa.com automated
metric tool also widely been used in the multi measures
data collection of web assessment such (Melinda and
Obra, 2013) utilized Alexa.com ranking data together with
interviews, web content analysis, and the number of
followers in social media data in order to formulate online
strategies in the context of museums.
Then, (Wang, Li and Zhang, 2011) had utilize
most of the measures from metric tools and one measure is
from Alexa.com engagement measures to construct Page
Interest (Page View, Bounce Rate and Time) which this
Page interest acted as one of the dependent variable in the
study that aimed to look at the impact by structure
optimization (error 404, layer number, page size),
keywords optimization (keyword density), content
optimization (Title length), and link optimization (overall
link). Other study used Alexa.com ranked as off-page
credibility feature in subcategory of award to show general
popularity on web page visualization compared to search
result visualization (Schwarz and Morris, 2011).
In term of number of websites been measure
simultaneously through website online metric tools, none
of literature mentioned they were followed any specific
procedure of minimum and maximum number of website
for evaluation. It can be said that number of websites been
evaluated using online metric tool such alexa.com is
depend on the objective of study; the data collected usage
and owned judgment on the number of website preferred.
(Dominic, 2011) evaluated five 5 airlines website
according to website performance metric tools name
Pingdom and Skytrax company that considered those five
website became a leaders in the area of IT
implementations and perhaps the best practice of web
design can be adapted. One study (Melinda and Obra,
2013) reviewed and collected data from 40 museums
which those are most physically visited museums in the
world. Another recent study by (Panda, Swain and Mall,
2015) utilize Alexa.com to get ten (10) highest-ranking
commerce websites and combined with the data of user
testing for designing appropriate and important usability
features for commerce website. In larger scope of study,
Butkiew collection 2000 website in various categories of
website specified in Alexa.com and triangulate with other
data in different metric tools to get understanding of
website complexity.

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Table-5. Steps, tools and objective of the study.
Using alexa.com automatic popularity metric,
four (4) measures’ values had been capture from Google
Chrome internet browser. The study was used this
procedure as follow in Table-6:
Table-6. Website evaluation using Alexa.com online
metric tools procedure.
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
The findings here are just initial or overview
investigation of current situation of ten (10) municipal
websites within Klang valley, Malaysia in term of website
popularity (part of credibility measure) and website
engagement. Through the result below, it’s proven that
further study should be taken into consideration to know
what the credibility factors in influencing website user
engagement.
a) Malaysia municipal website evaluation and its
popularity ranking
On the perspective of website popularity, most of
Malaysia government ranked far away behind at hundred
ranked of thousand ranked either in Malaysia or even out
of world ranked list. Below in Table-7 is the Malaysia
municipal list and URL for ten (10) municipal government
websites within Klang valley area.
Table-7. Government municipal website url within Klang
Valley area of Malaysia.
Selection of this ten (10) website is based on
objective of major research which to know current
situation of website popularity and engagement. The list of
Malaysia municipal website got from
http://www.mycen.com.my/malaysia/ministry.html 6th
April 2015 and its accessibility availability been checked
before proceed with evaluation online. Below as in Table-
8 is the ten (10) municipal Malaysia website popularity
ranking based on Alexa.com metric tool within the three
consequences month of Jun 2015 to August 2015.
Table-8. Government municipal website Malaysia
popularity ranking (alexa.com metric Tool).

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It’s showed that municipal website not as popular
as other commercial website or entertainment website or
even search engine site such Google that always ranked at
first ranking in the top ten listing. Herewith, less
popularity of Malaysia municipal websites give a signed
that further investigation need to be done to determine
why government website become less prominence.
The popularity of website solely may could not
be a good justification of credible website especially for
information driven website such government website.
However, when the information source is not a primer, it’s
become less credible (Schwarz & Morris, 2011) and
(Metzger, Flanagin and Meeders, 2010), instead (Salman,
Ali et al., 2014) also prove that information in the website
only become third highest usage of Internet as
communication used among urban Malaysian society for
information search. In relating to website credibility
study, (Schwarz and Morris, 2011) found that visualization
made a significant impact on participants’ ability to
evaluate credibility. Another study, (Wang, Li and Zhang,
2011) study resulted that Page Size has significant positive
effect on Page interest and Search Engine Optimization
(SEO). (Robins, Holmes & Stansbury, 2010) also used
Alexa.com ranking result as part of measures in identified
the relationship between visual design and credibility and
found that even traffic ranking by Alexa.com was
somehow misleading, though it value still showing some
finding on the real time of website situation.
b) Municipal electronic government website user
engagement
Based on the estimation of engagement statistic
based on Alexa.com metric tool showed in Table-9 that
the percentage of bounce rate are somehow higher, also
estimate of engagement statistic which highlighted based
on bounce rate, pageview per visitor (Estimated daily
unique pageviews per visitor on the site) and daily time on
site (Estimated daily time (minute and second) on site
(mm:ss) per visitor to the site) within three month starting
from Jun to August 2015. It’s been said that the less the
bounce rate means the more the return visit rate (Plaza,
2011). The minimum and maximum mean value of bounce
rate was between 9.87% and 33.77% which also show
quite huge ratio and the lower the bounce rate suppose
should be good reflecting user really into to the website. In
term of Daily Pageviews per Visitor minimum mean value
was 2.40% whereas maximum mean value was 19.23%.
The major different on maximum mean value on Daily
Pageviews per Visitor was belong to Klang municipal
website. Daily Time on Site was rating based on minute
and second and minimum mean value was 24 second and
maximum mean value was 6 minute and one second.
Table-9. Engagement statistic for ten municipal website which highlighted based on bounce rate, pageview per visitor and
daily time on site.

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The engagement measure supposed to show good
result with less bounce rate which not many user that only
visit the first page and then left from the website. Then
positive aspect of engagement also should show users
view as many page per day and longer time in each pages.
CONCLUSIONS
In conclusion, this paper highlights several
measures essential for determining website credibility
factors and website user engagement and some of it was
overlap such aesthetic measure. In term of assessment
method, instead of having well determined assessment
system that administered by the owner of the website,
researcher and scholar outside of its organization also can
complement the multi measures assessment using real time
and faster approach offered by online automated tool.
Findings from the online metric tool such Alexa.com
shown Malaysia municipal website need to fine strategies
on how to improve user engagement and make their
website prominent source of government information.
Even, the finding is based on estimation from huge data
online, low popularity ranking at least give a sign that
improvement need to be done for this primer online
information source become preferable. Factors in
determining user engagement also need to be crucially
conceptualize for future study or assessment. This study
also can be more impactful if include other measures such
as website performance or website effectiveness, so that
holistic picture of current municipal website can be
overview. Further study can be done either including
numbers of website on the same theme, longer time of
assessment for limited number of websites in order to get
more reliable pattern of findings.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors wish to thanks the Schools of
Postgraduate Studies, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia for
all the supports. Special thanks and appreciations also go
to the respective reviewers for useful comments and
feedbacks.
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