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ABSTRACT
This paper attempts to identify and validate the website content of the government municipal website for further development of surface credibility measurement. Surface credibility is the visitor first judgment and instant perception towards a website. The website looks, its content structures and other features located on the homepage may contribute positive first impression and persuade the visitors to enter the website. Adopting the web content analysis approach, this study identifies and analyze the website content that appropriates to become credibility cues and its location in persuading users to engage on the website. The result indicates that most credibility cues such page title, logo image, contact information and search option are located in the most appropriate location which has the higher range of visibility, hence suggesting that these websites have relatively owned expected surface credibility cues that can influence the user to engage. In the future, credibility cues that have been identified from the contents of the government municipal homepage will be used as part of the questionnaire items of surface credibility construct.
JEL Classification: H11; H.79
Keywords: Surface Credibility, Credibility, Government Municipal, Website Content.
1.INTRODUCTION
The surface credibility of the website is concerned with the appearance and the quality of its content. A highly credible website will attract new users and keep them to continuously engage with the functions or services offered by the website. On the other hand, a less credible website will result in user abandoning the website and make it less popular. The popularity ranking of the website has been highly associated with the surface credibility1. Among the criteria that used in assessing surface credibility include appropriate website title, clear of logo image, brief contact information, effective search option and other facilitating navigation features (Huang et al., 2009). Malaysia, being one of the leading developing countries in the implementation of electronic government depends very much on the website for delivering the government information and online services. Therefore, it is very crucial that the government website must be highly credible so as to ensure that its usage by the citizen is at an optimum level. One study on internet behavior showed government website was not extensively used or assessed as compared to other types of website. Given the importance of credible...