A Qualitative Analysis of the Websites of the Iranian Online Bookshops

INTRUDUCTION: The current study aimed to evaluate the quality of the websites of the Iranian online bookshops.
This study is an applied research which is conducted with using the evaluative method and webometric approach. The research population consisted of the websites of 72 online bookshops that were introduced by the Iran Book House. The WebQEM checklist was applied to data gathering and SPSS was used for data analysis.
FINDINGS:The research results revealed that about half of the websites of the online bookshops have been operative less than 10 years and the majority of them are related to the private sector. 82 percent of them are operating in the three cities of Tehran, Qom, and Mashhad and the others are working in just 8 cities. More than half of the websites have been registered with the IR domain. Moreover, the websites were evaluated as average for the variable of "usability", as good for its "functionality", as excellent for the "reliability"and as very good for its"efficiency".
Generally speaking, the evaluation of the websites demonstrated that none of them was in a low status and therefore, it can be concluded that all websites are in an average status as to the WebQEM criteria.