User-perceived Quality of Selected Tanzanian Public University Websites

Abstract

A study was conducted to assess the quality of websites of five selected public universities in Tanzania. The main purpose of the study was to understand the quality of university websites from users’ perspectives. This study employed a 22-item instrument measuring four dimensions of web quality namely technical adequacy, information quality, service ability and web appearance. Data were collected through email survey and they were analyzed using SPSS and Ms Excel. The study findings show that, of the five university websites evaluated, the SUA website ranked the highest followed by that of UDSM. The websites of SUZA, OUT and MU were ranked in the third to fifth positions respectively. Service ability is a construct that was highly supported in the five websites evaluated whereas web appearance is the construct that required improvements in all five websites. It is recommended that improvements should be done in some of the quality dimensions such as appearance in order to ensure that these websites deliver information to intended audience. Regular updating of websites is also essential to make them effective and meet the changing needs of users.