Applications of Quality Management Tools in the Evaluation of Websites: The Case of Sports Organizations

Past research has established the importance of the Web across industries, output types, and customers and the role of quality in this context. In addition, WebQual has emerged as a prominent tool for understanding how website quality is defined. While progress has been made in this area, almost all of the research in this stream focuses on the functional aspects of quality, overlooking the critical technical aspects. In addition, the research in this stream provides very little guidance about how to leverage WebQual in the narrower applied research context. Addressing this, the current study introduces a method by which WebQual may apply to the narrower (industry) research and design contexts. Specifically, the authors draw the WebQual instrument together with quality function deployment (QFD) and benchmarking analysis to offer a more precise approach to examining design-side elements of website quality. The approach is informed by primary data from 1,753 responses obtained from a large-scale survey targeting sports organizations' websites, in particular the case of elite soccer leagues. The results establish the validity of the method and the importance of connecting WebQual to the applied context to better understand the drivers of website quality.