Development of a city website – An analysis of users’ perceptions Sarianna Visuri Sarianna Visuri Master’s Thesis International Business Management 2021 MASTER’S THESIS Arcada Degree Programme: International Business Management Identification number: 7813 Author: Sarianna Visuri Title: Development of a city website – An analysis of users’ per- ceptions Supervisor (Arcada): Niklas Eriksson Commissioned by: Abstract: The internet has enabled and enhanced communication between people, organizations, governments, and cities. The internet and digitalization of services has changed the way the cities and other public sector actors provide services and information to the residents. The objective of this study was to find out the main improvements the current espoo.fi website users want to have on the renewed espoo.fi website. The renewed website will be launched in 2021. There was a mixed method questionnaire conducted, with both closed and open-ended questions. Espoo has had its website since the late 1990’s and there has been one prior renewal of the website in 2011. The questionnaire was distributed via the current Espoo.fi website and Espoo’s social media channels. It was answered by 433 re- spondents. The research questions were: how is the current Espoo.fi website used, what are the users’ perceptions of the content on the website, and what are the main improvements the users want to the renewed espoo.fi? The current website was stated to be used to find information on the services, mainly on weekly and monthly basis, and the content of the website needed to be easy to find. The five most wanted topics by the respondents to be on the renewed website were: the services of Espoo, and more precisely health services should be more clearly stated, the contact information of all service locations, and of the employ- ees of Espoo especially working in the city planning and building, city planning issues, a better search function, and decisions made by the City Council and the committees, includ- ing the minutes of the meetings. Keywords: website, quality, usability, accessibility, e-government Number of pages: 54 Language: English Date of acceptance: 2 CONTENTS 1 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 5 1.1 Research problem and aim ........................................................................................... 6 1.2 Delimitations .................................................................................................................. 7 1.3 Structure of the thesis ................................................................................................... 8 2 Literature review .................................................................................................. 9 2.1 The evolution of the Web .............................................................................................. 9 2.2 Growth of web usage .................................................................................................. 11 2.3 The usability of websites ............................................................................................. 11 2.4 The quality of websites ................................................................................................ 14 2.5 E-government .............................................................................................................. 17 2.6 The accessibility of websites ....................................................................................... 19 2.7 Summary of the literature review ................................................................................. 20 3 Method ................................................................................................................ 22 3.1 Data collection and participants .................................................................................. 22 3.2 Questionnaire design .................................................................................................. 26 3.3 Data analyses .............................................................................................................. 26 4 Results ............................................................................................................... 28 4.1 How is the current espoo.fi website used? .................................................................. 28 4.2 The user’s perceptions of the content ......................................................................... 30 4.3 What are the main improvements the users want for espoo.fi? .................................. 34 4.3.1 The new espoo.fi website should cover at least the following topics .................. 34 4.3.2 The redesign of the espoo.fi website could be modelled after another website . 38 4.3.3 General feedback on redesigning the espoo.fi website ...................................... 38 5 Discussion and conclusions ............................................................................. 42 5.1 Discussion of the results ............................................................................................. 42 5.2 Recommendations for the City of Espoo for the website renewal .............................. 44 5.3 Limitations ................................................................................................................... 45 5.4 Suggestions for further research ................................................................................. 45 References ................................................................................................................ 47 Appendices ............................................................................................................... 52 Appendix A: Research Questions ........................................................................................... 52 3 FIGURES Figure 1. The age and sex of the respondents................................................................. 24 Figure 2. The city districts by postal codes given in the questionnaire .......................... 25 Figure 3. The ten most visited pages of espoo.fi during February 10-29, 2020s ......... 27 Figure 4. The contents recently visited on Espoo.fi website .......................................... 31 Figure 5. The information usually needed from the espoo.fi website ........................... 32 Figure 6. The main page of the espoo.fi website should include, at minimum ............. 33 Figure 7. The most wanted topics on the new espoo.fi website. ................................... 34 Figure 8. The general feedback on topics on the new espoo.fi website ........................ 41 Tables Table 1. The age groups given in the questionnaire ....................................................... 23 Table 2. The topics the answers of the open-ended questions were coded to ............... 27 Table 3. The answers given to answer RQ1 ................................................................... 29 4 1 INTRODUCTION The internet and the world wide web have a major role as the means of communication in today’s world. The importance of a functioning and a usable website is enormous. Al- most all organizations, public or private, associations and even individuals have their own websites. Lamphere (2019) states that world wide web is a technology that assists the public in navigating the internet. The web is a revolutionary invention, made by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991, where the internet process is simplified, and documents and other web resources are available for the public in an accessible manner (Lamphere, 2019.) The web is a revolutionary mean of access to the community, and for citizens to exercise their citizenship within the community. The web provides links between other public in- stitutions, different groups and members of the groups, and the web has for instance im- proved education and built democracy worldwide. However, the web as one type of media and a communication platform, does not replace schools, city councils or parliaments, but it enables the citizens’ participation in the society in a more streamlined and effective manner. Web technology enables constant discussion and negotiation between people through dynamic and quick processes, and by using different designs and models the web provides possibilities for reciprocity by different kinds of participants. The web also al- most achieves the characteristics of a face-to-face communication, but there is a funda- mental difference compared with the traditional communication ways such a broadcasted news and printed newspapers. Today’s web broadens the communication between differ- ent groups from giving information to having a conversation. (Dahlgreen, 2016) The improvements of technology according to Rust & Huang (2012) have made it possi- ble to create new service methods, especially within customer service. The more familiar and experienced the customers have become with the internet, the willingness to use the new technology and services has increased. The internet has enabled the creation of dif- ferent kinds of self-service technologies, and the usage of the self-service technologies has created possibilities for organizations to reduce the number of their service personnel and cut costs. Rust & Huang (2012) continue that efficiency improvements resulting from customers using the internet may also increase service quality, however, very often there 5 is a trade-off between quality and productivity. A greater use of