User Satisfaction with Web Portals: An Empirical Study

Abstract

A Web portal is a site that aggregates information from multiple sources on the World Wide Web and organizes this material in an easy user-friendly manner. Portals usually consist of a search engine, e-mail, news, and interactive chat facilities. The two main types of portals are horizontal and vertical portals. A horizontal portal is a Web site that provides consumers access to a number of different sites in terms of content and functionality. A vertical portal focuses on a specific community of users who share a common interest. In this chapter we investigate the impact of user characteristics such as gender, age, experience, and Web use on user satisfaction with Web portals. In our study we are unable to detect any differences in satisfaction based on gender. We find that the users with seven to 10 years of work experience are most satisfied with Web portals, while users with more than 10 years work experience report least satisfaction with Web portals. We also find that users that use Web portals the least (30 to 60 minutes per week) are least satisfied with them. Users of vertical (or customer community) portals are always more satisfied than users of horizontal (or mega) portals.