A RESEARCH TAXONOMY FOR E-COMMERCESYSTEM USABILITY

E-commerce systems (ECS) are Web-based systems that perform various stages of an e-commerce transaction. ECS typically include sub-systems such as electronic catalogs, shopping-cart systems, payment systems, ordertracking systems, merchandise return systems, customer service systems, and other e-commerce functions. Similar to conventional information systems, system usability is an important issue for ECS. For developers, usability guidelines or principles are essential for improving user interfaces, system designs, and functionality of the system. However, most existing usability studies were conducted on different computing platforms. The results may not be applicable to ECS unconditionally. This paper is a research in progress that examines the usability issues of ECS. It first reviews and classifies existing studies related to system usability in the past few decades. The applicability of findings from existing studies is examined and discussed. Finally, a research taxonomy for measuring and improving the usability of ECS is proposed.