J. Serv. Sci. & Management. 2008, 1: 91-100
Published Online June 2008 in SciRes (www.SRPublishing.org/journal/jssm)
Website Design Quality and Form Input Validation: An
Empirical Study on Irish Corporate Websites
Mary Levis1, Markus Helfert1 and Malcolm Brady1
1 Dublin City University
ABSTRACT
The information ma intained ab out products, services and cu stomers is a m ost valuable o rganisational asset. Th erefore,
it is important for successful electronic business to have high quality websites. A website must however, do more than
just look attractive it must be usable and presen t useful, usable information. Usability essen tia lly means tha t the website
is intuitive and allows visitors to find what they are looking for quickly and without effort. This means careful consid-
eration of the structure of information and navigational design. According to the Open Web Applications Security Pro-
ject, invalidated input is one of the top ten critical web-application security vulnerabilities. We empirically tested 21
Irish corporate websites. The findings suggested that one of the biggest problems is that many failed to use mechanisms
to validate even the basic user data input at the source of collection which could potentially result in a database full of
useless information.
Keywords: Website Design Quality, Form Input Validation, Information Quality, Data Quality
1. Introduction
The World Wide Web (WWW) is the largest available
distributed dynamic repository of information, and has
undergone massive and rapid growth since its inception.
There are over 2,060,000 users in Ireland alone. Over the
last seven years (2000 - 2007), Internet usage in Ireland
has grown by 162.8%; in United Kingdom by 144.2%; in
Europe by 221. 5% an d Wo rl d wi de by 24 4.7% [18].
Based on these facts, the Internet has assumed a central
role in many aspects of our lives and therefore creates a
greater need for businesses to design better websites in
order to stay competitive and increase revenue. Interac-
tivity is essential to engage visitors and lead them to the
desired action and customers are more likely to return to a
website that has useful interactivity.
The website's homepage should be a marketing tool
designed as a 'bil lboard' for t he or ganizat ion. The desi gn is
critical in capturing the viewer's attention and interest [25]
and should represent the company in a meaningful and
positive light. Therefore, there are many web design
concerns for commercial organizations when designing
their website.
The most basic are as follows: content that should be
included, selecting relevant and essential information,
designing a secure, usable, user friendly web interface that
is relatively easy to nav igate, and ensuring the site is easy
to find us ing any of the ma jor se arch eng ines. In the driv e
to make the website look appealing from a visual per-
spective other factors are often ignored, such as validation
and security, which leads to poor user experience and data
quality problems.
Data in the real world is constantly changing therefore
feedback is necessary in order to ensure that quality is
maintained. Data is dee med of high quality if it ‘correctly
represents the real-world construct to which it refers so
that products or decisions can be made’ [30]. One can
probably find as many definitions for quality on the web as
there are papers on quality. There are however, a number
of theoretical frameworks for understanding data quality.
Redman [33] and Orr [27] have presented cybernetic
models of information quality. The cybernetic view con-
siders organizations as made up of closely interacting
feedback systems that link quality of information to how it
is used, in a feedback cycle where the actions of each
system is continuously modified by the actions, changes
and outputs of the others [2,29,36]. Figure 1 shows an
information system in the real world context.
Figure 1: Information syste m in the realworld context
[29]

92 Mary Levis, Markus Helfert and Malcolm Brady
Wang and Strong proposed a data quality framework
that includes the categories of intrinsic data quality, ac-
cessibility data quality, contextual data quality and repre-
sentational data quality outlined in table 1.
Table1. IQ dimensions [17]
DQ Category DQ Dimensions
Intrinsic DQ Accuracy, Objectivity,
Believability, Reputation
Accessibility DQ Accessibility,
Access Security
Contextual DQ R e le vancy , Value Added
Timeliness, Completeness,
Amount of Data
Representational
DQ
Interpretability, Ease of
understanding, Concise
Representation,
Consistent Representation
The quality of websites may be linked to such criteria
as timeliness, ease of navigation, ease of access and
presentation of information. From the customer's perspec-
tive usability is the most important quality of a Web ap-
plication [8].
However, even if all procedures are adhered to, errors
can still arise that reduce the quality standard of the online
experience . Fo r e xam pl e, a fil e m ay be moved or a n image
deleted, which results in broken links. The root cause that
leads to web application problems is the poor appro ach to
web design.
To remedy this several techniques exist to evaluate the
quality of websites for exam ple link checkers, accessi bility
checkers and cod e validation. To help improve th e quality
of a website, aspects such as structure and page layout
need to be consistent and coherent. A good website must
include safe guards a gainst fa ilure an d prov ide si mple , user
friendly data entry and validation processes.
From the literature reviewed a universal definition of
information quality is difficult to achieve [3, 21, 26, 29, 38,
42]. Accor ding to [25] 'Technically, information that meets
all the requirements is quality information'. Some ac-
cepted definitions of quality from the quality gurus are
shown in table 2.
Table 2. Quality definitions from the quality gurus
Author Quality Definitions
Deming Meeting the customers needs
Juran Fitness for use
Crosby Conformance to requirements
Ishikawa Continuous improvement
Feigenbaum Customer satisfaction
One definition of quality is ‘the totality of characteris-
tics of an entity that bear on its ability to satisfy stated and
implied needs’ [13, 14]. Two requirements for website
evaluation emerge from this definition. 1) general valua-
tion of all the site’s characteristics and 2) how well the site
meets specific needs.
1.1. Related Work
Pernici and Scannapieco [28] d iscuss a set of data quality
dimensions such as expiration, completeness, source reli-
ability, and accuracy to evaluate data quality in web in-
formation systems to support correct interpretation of web
pages content. Cusimano Com Corp [4] declared that ef-
fective web sites must be clear, informative, concise, and
graphically appealing.
Tilton [40] recommends that Web designers should
present clear information that has a consistent navigation
structure. Hylnka and Welsh [12] put forward the argu-
ment that the web page is a sour ce of communication and
should be analysed within communication theory.
Kelly and Vidgen [16] is concerned with the combina-
tion of a quality assessment method, E-Qual, and a light-
weight quality assurance method, QA focus and states that
website developers need to use standards and best prac-
tices to ensure that websites are functional, accessible and
interoperable.
There are a number of ways to evaluate the quality of
websites, such as competitive analysis, inspection, and
online questi onnaires. WebQu al, develope d by Ba rnes and
Vidgen [1] is one approach to the assessment of website
quality. WebQual, has 3 main dimensions: usability, in-
formation quality, and service interaction quality. Ac-
cording to [1], WebQual is a ‘structured and disciplined
process that provides a means to identify and carry the
voice of the c ustomer thr ough each stage of product a nd or
service development and implementation’.
Usability is concerned with the quality associated with
the site design; Information Quality is con cerned with the
quality of content of the site; Service In teraction quality is
concerned with quality prov ided to the users as they enter
into the site. Within these dimensions, WebQual consists
of a set of 23 questions regarding the website being as-
sessed and each question contains a rating from 1-7; 1 =
strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree.
Detailed information about evaluating websites can be
found at [24, 34, 35]. Eppler & Muenzem ayer [7] identifies
2 manifestations, 4 quality categories, and 16 quality di-
mensions. Kahn et al. [17] mapped IQ dimensions to the
PSP/IQ model with 2 quality types, 4 quality classifica-
tions, and 16 quality dimensions. Zhu & Gauch [44] out-
lines 6 quality metrics for information retrieval on the web.
1.2. What Is a Quality Website?
Online interactivity is a valuable way of improving the

Website Design Quality and Form Input Validation: 93
An Empirical Study on Irish Corporate Websites
quality of b usiness websites and web designers shou ld be
aware of how design affects the quality of the website and
the image of the organization.
Good websites have a rich and intuitive link structure. A
link going to the Customer Service should be named
'Customer Service' and the surfer looking for Customer
Service information will know this link goes to the page
they want. T herefore, ' click he re' should ne ver be use d as a
link.
Information managers and developers must determine
how much information users need [25]. Some users will
need much background on a specific topic whilst others
may only need a summary or overview. A good web de-
signer will think clearly about how each piece of data links
up with the rest of the content on the website and will
organize the links accordingly.
Without a clear navigation system, viewers can become
disoriented. Hyperl inks are di stinguis hed fr om norm al text
within a page by its colour. When the page pointed to by a
hyperlink has been 'visited’ browsers will inform the users
by changing the link's colour [41].
The most vulnerable part of any web application is its
forms and the most common activity of web applications is
to validate the users’ data. According to the Open Web
Applications Security Project [27] invalidated input is in
the top ten critical web application security vulnerabilities.
Input validation is an important part of creating a robust
technological system and securing web applications. Be-
cause of the fundamental client server nature of the web
application, input validation should be done both on the
client and the server.
Client side validation is used to provide input data
validation at the data collection point before the form is
submitted and check that the required fields are filled and
conform to certain characteristics such as built in length
restriction, numeric limits, email address valid ity, charac-
ter data format etc. Incorrect data validation can lead to
data corruption.
Table 3. Example validation checks
Validation check Description
Character set Ensure data only contain char-
acters you expect
Data format Ensure structure of data is con-
sistent with what is expected
Range check Data lies within specific range of
values
Presence check No missing / empty fields
Consistency check If title is 'Mr' then gender is
'Male'
Input validation should be performed on all incoming
data ensuring the information system stores clean, correct
and useful data. Examples of invalid data are: text entered
into a numeric field, numeric data entered into a text field,
or a percentage entered into a currency field. Table 3
provides an example set of checks that coul d be perform ed
to ensure the incoming data is valid before data is proc-
essed or used .
Having contact information available and visible on the
website is a marketing plus that potential customers use in
order to judge a company’s trustworthiness, as it signifies
respect for the customer and implies promise of good
service.
Feedback mechanisms built into the website are a useful
way to get meaningful feedback on the website and service
quality from the people who matter most – your customers.
After all, one definition of quality is ‘meeting or exceeding
the customer’s expectations’.
One of the most important factors for a website being
successful is speed. If the website is unresponsive, with
long response times the visitors will not come again. Speed
or responsiveness is integral to good website design and
organizational success. Web pages should be designed
with speed in mind [31]. It is estimated that if a page
doesn't load within 5-8 seconds you will lose 1/3 of your
visitors [35]. However, many designers believe that with
the recent development of broadband, visual aesthetics is
now more im portant as downl oad speed is not such a major
concern. Nevertheless, not all users have broadband and
this should be taken into cons ideration .
For the pu rpos e of t his st udy we c ond ucted an em pi rical
study using a data set of twenty one finalists in a recent
website quality technology award. The aim of this study
was to examine these websites for Technical quality issues
from the user’s perspective.
Our analysis focused on helping website owners under-
stand the importance of certain website characteristics,
quality of information and functionalities. During the
analysis we tested functionalities in the website like forms,
the navigation process, the relevance of all click through
and the page download speed.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Sectio n 2
shows our methodology, Section 3 giv es a brief summary
and Section 4 some conclusions.
2. Research
2.1. Methodology
We conducted an empirical study on a recent accountancy
website quality technology award competition using the
full data set of twenty one finalists that included (3) Char-
ity/Not for Profit organizations, (7) Large Quoted Com-
panies, (2) Sma ll Quot ed C om panies an d (9) Statut ory an d
Unquoted Companies. The identity of websites has been
concealed due to confidentiality regulations regarding

94 Mary Levis, Markus Helfert and Malcolm Brady
38%
10% 5%
29%
52%
29%
90%
48%
57%
62%
90% 95%
71%
48%
71%
10%
52%
43%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
their identity.
The aim of this study was to examine these websites for
Technical quality issues. This required validatin g the sites
against a series of checkpoints that included: checking
that legal and regulatory guidelines were adhered to (e.g.
data protection and privacy), that pages conformed to
Web-Accessibility standard (e.g. missing 'alt tags'), miss-
ing page titles, browser compatibility, user feedback
mechanisms, applications were functioning correctly (e.g.
online forms are validated for input etc.). It also included
evaluation of the main characteristics and structure of the
sites for example clear ordering of information, broken
links, and ease of navi gation. The principle us ed was based
on the same criteria used t o evaluate the participants in the
2006 award [10, 32, 39, 43]. The criteria subset used for
this study is outlined in tab le 4.
Table 4. Set of criteria used in our study
Validation Criteria
Contrast colours support readability & understanding
Professional appearance
Do not use 'click here'
What you clicked on is title of page jumped to
Links back to home page are functional & relevant
Help features available and easy to access
Visited links change colour
Site map
Interactive form validated for input
Mailto parameters set correctly?
Web address simply a case of adding .com or .ie to
Useful search eng ine provi ded
Site search provided
FAQ
Data Protection & Privacy
2.2. Findings and Analysis
Table 5 shows the number of companies who defaulted
and the number of companies who adhered to selected
criteria.
Twelve websites did not include a link to their data
protection and privacy policy. A help and Frequently
Asked Question (FAQ) page is a general requirement for
good website design. As far as navigation goes, this page
should tell the user how to find products or information
and how to get to the sitemap, yet, 10 companies did not
have a FAQ link and 11 did not have help features avail-
able and easy to access. Seven out of the 21 sites evalu-
ated did not have the mailto parameters set correctly.
Fifteen sites had fully functional and relevant links to
other pages and back to the homepage. Thirteen sites
promoted contrast colours supporting readability and un-
derstanding and 19 had a professional feel and appearance
and did not ha ve horizo ntal s croll bars . T went y o f the tot al
twenty one sites adhered to the criteria of having the title of
page jumped also as the labe l of the link connecting to it.
The percentage of sites that adherence to the criteria and
the percentage of sites that defaulted on the criteria are
shown in figure 2.
Table 5. Criteria for website evaluation
Validation Criteria De-
faulted Ad- hered
Contrast colours support read-
ability and understanding 8 13
Professional appearance 2 19
No use of 'click here' links 12 9
What is clicked on is title of
page jumped to 1 20
Links to home page functional
and relevant 6 15
Help features available & easy to
access 11 10
Visited links change colour 16 5
Site map available 6 15
Form validation for input 17 4
Mailto parameters set correctly 7 14
Web address is a case of add-
ing .com or .ie to company name 4 17
Useful search engine pr o vi de d 19 2
Site search provided 7 14
Frequently Asked Questions 10 11
Data Protection and Privacy 12 9
a b c d e f g h i
Figure 2. Percentage of sites that defaulted and per-
centage of sites that adhered to selected criteria (a-
Colours s support readability; b-Professional appear-
ance; c-what clicked on was title of page jumped to;
d-Links functional &relevant; e-Help features avail-
able &easy to access; f-Mailto parameters set cor-
rectly. g-Use search engine; h-Frequently asked ques-
tion page; i-Data protection &privacy)
Figure 3 depicts the results from the Friendly URLs

Website Design Quality and Form Input Validation: 95
An Empirical Study on Irish Corporate Websites
(Uniform Resource Locator). Seventeen (81%) of the 21
sites tested had good structured semantic URLs, made up
of the actual name of t he specific company where we could
guess the UR L by si mply addi ng .com , .org or .ie to the
company name. For example a company named ‘Jitnu’
had a URL http://www.jitnu.ie or http://www.jitnu.co m or
http://www.jitnu.org as the web addresses which convey
meaning and structure. Only 19 % of the companies ex-
amined defaulted on these criteria having a URL for ex-
ample such as http://www.jitnu.ie/?id=478 instead of
http://www.jitnu.ie/services or had a file extension
like .php as part of their URL.
Web address adding .com, .org or .ie
Adhered to , 17, 81%
Defaulted on, 4, 19%
Figure 3. Res u l ts o f th e friendl y URL's crite ria
Figure 4 shows that 16 (76%) of the 21 sites examined
used the same link colour for visited and unvisited pages
and did not support a convention that users expect. Failing
on this navigational aid could well increase navigational
confusion and introduce usability problems for the user.
Good practice is to let viewers see their navigation path
history (i. e. pages they have al read y visited) by dis pl a y ing
links to ‘visi t ed pages’ in a different colour.
Visited links change colour
Did not change colour,
16, 76%
Changed Co lo ur
, 5, 24%
Figure 4. Visited pages changed link colour
Sitemaps are particularly beneficial when users cannot
access all areas of a we bsite through the browsing interface.
Failure to provide this access option may lose potential
viewers. A large website should contain a site map and
search optio n. From analysis of our findings in figu re 5, we
show that six websites ( 29% ) di d n ot provide a site map.
Visitors appreciate search capability on sites that deals
with several different products or services. In figure 6 we
show that although adding a search function on a website
helps visitors to quickly find information they need, seven
(33%) of the 21 sites reviewed failed to provide a com-
prehensive site search or search interface.
Defaulted,
Site map , 6
Adheared to,
Site map , 15
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
Site map
Figure 5. Site map
While creating a good navigation system will be suffi-
cient help for many people, it won't meet the needs of
everyone . It ap pears that these companies fail to realise t he
importance of providing a search capability, which not
only make sites more interactive but also gives visitors
more control over their browsing experience.
Provision of search facility
No Search facility
provided, 19
Search Facility
provided, 2
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
Is a useful search engine provided
Figure 6. Search facility
Figure 7 shows the results of checking user-entered
email addresses for valid inpu t. An email address should
contain one and only one (@) and also c o ntain at l e ast one
(.). There should be no spaces or extra (@). There must
be at least one (.) after the (@) for an email address to be
valid. Some websites had implemented some form of
email address validation bu t did so incorrectly. Fo r exam-
ple they correctly rejected jitnu.eircon.net and
jitnu@eircom@net as invalid email addresses, however,
they incorrectly accepted 'jitnu.eircom@net', as a valid
email address thus allowing an invalid email address to
pass to the system as a valid. While they co rrectly checked
for the presence of the (@) and the (.), they did not how-
ever check the order in which the (@) and the (.) appeared

96 Mary Levis, Markus Helfert and Malcolm Brady
in the inputted email addr ess. From the review of the sites
we found that 17 (81%) had no validation process on email
addresses while only 4, (19%) of the 21 sites reviewed
shown in figure 7 had complete validation.
Interactive form validated for input
Passed input
validation,
4, 19%
Failed input
validation ,
17, 81%
Figure 7. Email validation
Figure 8 shows that 12 (57%) of the 21 websites were
careless about their link text quality by using the ‘Click
Here’, which does not give in dicat ion of the conte nt of t he
linked page, while nine (43%) used meaningful link text
which clearly identified the target of the links.
Defaulted:
Used 'click here',
12 Adheared to,
Did not use 'click here',
9
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
Use typed link labels on HTML anchors; do not use 'click here'
Figure 8. Click here anchors
Figure 9 shows the number of companies that observed
and adhered to the quality criteria set out for this review
and figure 10 shows the number that defaulted in the above
criteria. It can be seen that 19 sites had a professional
appearance wi th no annoying horizont a l scroll bars and 20
sites used the page title of th e page link ed to as an an chor.
However only 2 of th e 21 sites un d er r eview h ad pr ov ided
a site search option and 4 sites had complete validation on
email addresses.
Figure 11 shows that six out of 21 sites under review did
not have their ‘mailto’ parameter set correctly to facilitate
the user with easy feedback option and none of the 21 sites
provided an option for the users to view the feedback
provided by other users. Providing feedback options
greatly enhances the website as many errors go unnoticed
until the user draws it to the attention of the organization .
From our analysis we found that all sites had good page
load speed between a minimum 0.5 seconds and a maxi-
mum of 1.5 seconds and an average load speed of .89
seconds. The average download per Kb was .26 seconds
with a minimum speed of .02 seconds and a maximum
speed of 3.76 seconds. The mini mum si te si ze wa s .17k b,
the maximum site size was 45.68kb and the average site
size was 20.45 kb.
Adhered To Criteria
13
19 20
15
10
15
2
11
9
0
5
10
15
20
25
a b c d e f g h i
Figure 9. Adhered to selected criteria(a- Colors sup-
port readability; b-Professional appearance; c-what
clicked on was title of page jumped to; d-Links func-
tional &relevant; e-Help features available &easy to
access; f-Mailto parameters set correctly. g-Use search
engine; h-Frequently asked question page; i-Data
protection &privacy)
Defaulted
8
21
6
11
6
19
10
12
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
a b c d e f g h i
Figure 10. Defaulted on selected criteria(a- Colors
support readability; b-Professional appearance;c-what
clicked on was title of page jumped to; d-Links func-
tional &relevant; e-Help features available &easy to
access; f-Mailto parameters set correctly. g-Use search
engine; h-Frequently asked question page; i-Data
protection &privacy)
3. Summary
The Internet is an interactive channel and successful web-
sites are those that are built on a foundation of interactiv-
ity. As the Internet's first real feedback mechanism, forms
processing is still the most widely used interactivity on
websites. Companies have invested vast amounts of

Website Design Quality and Form Input Validation: 97
An Empirical Study on Irish Corporate Websites
money and resources to make their website a strategic
part of their business. But what do their customers actu-
ally experience when they perform a transaction on their
site?
From our study we found that th e web applications un-
der investigation were notorious for taking practically any
type of input, assuming that it's valid, and processing it
further. Not validating input is one of the biggest mistakes
that Web-application developers make. This can lead to
database corruption. The results from our investigation of
the company websites show that one of the biggest prob-
lems with online forms on the web is that many corporate
companies failed to validate user input to ensure reliability
and potentially resulted in a database full of useless in-
formation. (See figure 12, figure 13 and figure 14).
Number/21
Number/21, 6
Number/21,
21
0
5
10
15
20
25
Feedback " mailto" parameters
not set correctly users can not see the feedback that ot he rs have provided
Feedback " mailto" parameters not set c orrec t ly
users c an not see t he feedback that others have provided
Figure 11. Feedback option and accessibility
Figure: 12. Example of no date of birth validation on
corporate website form
Figure 13. Example of trusting the user to enter and
validate their own data
Figure 14. Example of useless information collected
in one Irish corporate website
This study highlighted that to date a large number of
web applications have not used mechanisms to validate
even the very basic data input at the source of collection.
Given that the sites under review in this study included
large quoted companies, small quoted companies, charities
and not for profit, statutory and unquoted organizations
and that some had been recognized for excellence in fi-
nancial reporting; it was surprising to find that 81% of the
sites under examination failed on basic input validation.
All 100% of large quoted companies and 100% small
quoted companies failed in their email input validation
while 67% of charities/not for profit organizations and
67% of statutory and unq uo ted or gan izations und er inv es-
tigation failure to valid ate emails. No less than 90 % failed
to provide a useful search engine but 71 % did provide a

98 Mary Levis, Markus Helfert and Malcolm Brady
site map.
Providing a site search function makes the site search-
able. The sitemap should include every page on the site,
categorized for easier navigation. These are the links that
users look for when they cannot find what they are actually
looking for on the site. However, 67% provided a site
search facility and 81% had friendly URL’s that were easy
to remember and most sites had a good de sign layout that
was consistent throughout. The consistency aspect of
quality was closely adhered to by all sites making it easier
for the user to navigate.
4. Conclusions
Today's Internet user expects to experience personalized
interaction with websites. If the company fails to deliver
they run the risk of losing a potential customer forever.
An important aspect of creating interactive web forms to
collect information from users is to be able to check that
the information entered is valid, therefore; information
submitted through these forms should be extensively
validated. Validation could be performed using client
script where errors are detected when the form is submit-
ted to the server and if any errors are found the submis-
sion of the form to the server is cancelled and all errors
displayed to the user. This allows the user to correct their
input before re-submitting the form to the server. We can
not underestimate the importance of input validation
which ensures that the application is robust against all
forms of input data obtained from the user.
Although the majority of web vulnerabilities are easy to
understand and avoid many web developers are unfortu-
nately not very security-aware. A company database needs
to be of reliable quality in order to be usable. A simple
check whether a website conforms to the very basic stan-
dards could have been done using the W3C HTML vali-
dation service, which is free to use.
Web developers need to become aware and trained in
Information Quality Management principles, and espe-
cially in the information quality dimensions as outlined in
Table 2. The only proven reliable way to dea l with bad data
is to prevent it from entering the system. Input can be
compared against a specific value; ensure that an input
field was filled and that the value falls within a certain
range. Allowing bad data into the system makes the en tire
system unreliable and indeed unusable.
Making purchases online is all about confidence; a
customer must feel assured that you are a reputable com-
pany, and the best way to project that image is through a
well designed website. A consumer visiting a website that
looks a little dodgy will not feel confident enough to
submit their credit card information.
Slow response times and difficult navigation are the
most common complaints of Internet users. After waiting
past a certain ‘attention threshold’ users look for a faster
site. Of course, exactly where that threshold is d epends on
many factors. How compelling is the experience? Is there
effective feedback? Etc. Our analysis identified these and
many other shortcomings that should have been realised
and dealt with during the website test phases. Many
problems could be eliminated by checking for letters (al-
phabet entries only); checking for numbers (numeric en-
tries only); checking for a valid range of values ; checking
for a valid date input; and checking for valid email ad-
dresses. However, it is important to keep in mind that a
user could enter a valid e-mail address that does not actu-
ally exist. It is therefore, imperative that some sort of ac-
tivation process needs to be done in order to confirm a
valid and correct email add ress.
5. Acknowledgements
This research is funded by Dublin City University Busi-
ness School.
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100 Mary Levis, Markus Helfert and Malcolm Brady
AUTHORS’ BIOGRAP HIES
Mary Levis joined Dublin City University Business School as a full time, Ph.D Research Scholar in the field of Info r-
mation Management, in November 2006. Mary’s work is co-supervised by Dr. Malcolm Brady, Dublin City University
Business School, and Dr. Markus Helfert, Dublin City University (School of Computing). Her studies are funded for
three years by a scholarship from Dublin City University Business School. She holds a B.Sc degree in Computer Ap-
plications (Info Sys) from Dublin City University (School of Computing). Mary has presented her work at many Inter-
national conferences. Mary is a member of the Irish Computer Society (ICS), British Computer Society (BCS), the In-
ternational Association of Information Data Quality (IAIDQ), Engineers Ireland (EI) and United Kingdom Academy for
Information Systems (UKAIS) Institute for the Management of Information Systems. Mary has been invited by the In-
ternational Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS) to be session chair of an ICEIS-2008 session(s), in
Barcelona, Spain. Email:
Dr. Malcolm Brad y has l ectured in manag ement at Dubli n C i ty Uni versity B usiness School since 19 9 6. P ri o r t o joining
DCU he worked for m any years as an IT consultant in the fi nancial services and utility indust ries and before that as a ci vil
engineer i n the desig n and const ruction of g as, water, a nd sewera ge systems. He teaches c ourses in strat egic ma nagement,
project management, and business process innovation. His research interests are in game theory, duopoly, advertising,
differentiation and competitive advantage. He graduated from University College Dublin with a Bachelors degree in Civil
Engineering and a Masters degree in Management Science; he holds a Diplôme d'Ingénieur from Ecole National
Supérieur du Pétrole et des Moteurs, a French Grande Ecole; he obtained an MBA from Dublin City University. He
recently completed a PhD from the Department of Economics at Lancaster University. Email:
Dr. Markus Helfert is a lecturer in Information Systems at Dublin City University, Irelan d and programme ch air of the
European M.Sc. in Business Informatics at Dublin City University. His research interests include Information Quality,
Data Warehousing, Information System Architectures, Supply Chain Management and Business Informatics education.
His current research in information quality builds on his PhD research in data quality management in data warehouse
systems. He holds a Doctor in business administration from the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland ), a Master-D egr ee
in business informatics from the University Mannheim (Germany) and a Bachelor of Science from Napier University,
Edinburgh (UK-Scotland). He has authored academic articles and book contributions and has presented his work at in-
ternational conferences. Email: