Usability in online shops: scale construction, validation and the influence on the buyers’ intention and decision

This paper describes the development and empirical validation of a new scale for measuring usability in online shops, i.e. the Usability Questionnaire for Online Shops (UFOS1). Sixty users with different demographic characteristics were given the task of finding and ordering products in two out of six web shops. In addition to usability, shop response time, shop size, services, distinctiveness of products and trust were used as predictors with intention to buy and decision to buy as criteria. A factor analysis of UFOS revealed seven factors, consisting of general usability, accessibility of general conditions, product search, shopping-basket handling, process of ordering, product overview, self-descriptiveness and product characteristics. Results on intention to buy show that about half of the participants were not willing to buy online, and users with more experience in online shopping and a higher frequency of Internet use were more willing to buy online. A regression analysis of buying intention shows that usability has the greatest impact on buying intention, followed by the size of the shop and trust. A discriminant analysis reveals that usability and perceived size are the characteristics which contribute mostly to the decision to buy and correctly classify 91% of the decision to buy.

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