Usability and credibility of e-government websites

Highlights

• The mutual influence between the usability and credibility of e-government websites has been explored.

• A set of usability (e.g., ease of moving) and credibility strengths (e.g., correct URL) have been identified on current e-government websites.

• A number of usability (e.g. links with too many colours) and credibility weaknesses (e.g., lack of contact) have been found on current e-government websites.

• The effect of users’ perception of usability and credibility on their performance has been investigated.

Abstract

Albeit e-government has seen a steady growth, it can still benefit from a better user engagement, and usability and credibility are believed to be among the factors that influence such engagement. This paper presents an empirical study that evaluates the usability and credibility of current e-government websites and looks at user performance while using these websites. The study is based on a heuristic evaluation which aims to capture users' perception of usability and credibility. Our results show a close correlation between usability and credibility, as e-government websites with a high usability were perceived as having higher credibility, and vice versa. A number of usability and credibility weaknesses were identified on our sample of e-government websites.

Introduction

The power of the internet and web technologies has been clearly demonstrated in business, as exemplified by the enormous success of electronic commerce (e-commerce). Local, regional, and national governments around the globe have been tasked with leveraging such power to develop electronic government (e-government). E-government involves the use of information and communication technologies, particularly web-based applications to provide faster, easier and more efficient access to and delivery of information/services to the public (Lee, 2010). Most importantly, e-government is said to reform the back-office (The “back-office” comprises systems that run or support e-government processes, while the “front-office” comprises the various interfaces – e.g., websites or mobile applications – of e-government systems with the public.), making it work more efficiently in terms of information exchange and knowledge sharing between various units, departments and organizations (Homburg & Bekkers, 2002). Today, thousands of e-government systems are accessible via the internet offering a variety of online government information and services (Shareef, Kumar, Kumar, & Dwivedi, 2011). However, generating greater user engagement that translates into information access, service utilization, and participation in government decision making still remains a challenge. Usability and credibility are among the reasons for that challenge because they affect citizens' usage and acceptance of e-government, and influence their day-to-day interaction with e-government websites (Clemmensen & Katre, 2012). As indicated by Wathen and Burkell (2002), failure to develop usable and credible websites may change users' attitudes, reduce their satisfaction, and raise their concerns about the use of information and services offered on those websites.

Accordingly, usability is a critical element in the success of e-government (Youngblood & Mackiewicz, 2012). As suggested by Scott (2005), developers of e-government solutions must regularly monitor and enhance the usability of their websites to attract and satisfy users. As such, many studies have focused on defining e-government websites' usability constructs (e.g., Barnes & Vidgen, 2004; Gouscos et al., 2007). Some studies measured the multifaceted dimensions of e-government website usability (e.g., Garcia, Maciel, & Pinto, 2005), while others assessed its influence on users' attitude and behaviours (e.g., Teo, Srivastava, & Jiang, 2008). However, even with the insights gathered from those studies, current e-government websites are still plagued by a number of usability problems, including hard-to-understand content, inconsistent formats, poor navigation capabilities, disorientation, difficulty in using help functions, and lack of reliability. Not surprisingly, such usability problems may negatively affect e-government credibility. For instance, Huang, Brooks, and Chen (2009) found that usability issues such as broken links, overloaded information presentation, and inconsistent colours play an important role in the extent to which an e-government website is perceived as credible. In this sense, it is important to consider credibility issues when studying e-government usability in order to be able to design e-government systems that support the user in achieving the desired service outcome, and hence generate greater user participation.

This exploratory study aims to evaluate the usability and credibility of current e-government websites and assess the possible link between them. Our aim is that our findings can be leveraged by designers to improve the quality of e-government websites which will hopefully lead to a more usable and credible e-government. To conduct the study, we selected 3 London-area municipal websites, and recruited 36 people to participate in the evaluation of the 3 websites. Among the various evaluation methods available to us, we opted for a heuristic evaluation. We captured users' perception of e-government websites' usability and credibility, and measured the level of interaction of users with those websites. We then investigated the effect of users' perception of usability and credibility on their performance.

This paper is structured as follows. In Section 2 we provide some background on e-government in the UK, discuss the usability and credibility of e-government websites, and introduce and justify our evaluation method. In Section 3 we detail our empirical approach. Data analysis is discussed in Section 4. Finally, conclusions, limitations, and future work are covered in Section 5.