Developing and validating an instrument for measuring user-perceived web quality

Many of the instruments to measure information and system quality were developed in the context of mainframe and PC-based technologies of yesteryears. With the proliferation of the Internet and World Wide Web applications, users are increasingly interfacing and interacting with web-based applications. It is, therefore, important to develop new instruments and scales, which are directly targeted to these new interfaces and applications. In this article, we report on the development of an instrument that captures key characteristics of web site quality from the user’s perspective. The 25-item instrument measures four dimensions of web quality: specific content, content quality, appearance and technical adequacy. While improvements are possible, the instrument exhibits excellent psychometric properties. The instrument would be useful to organizations and web designers as it provides an aggregate measure of web quality, and to researchers in related web research.