A Mechanism for Evalutaing Feedback of e-Commerce Sites

The developers of e-commerce applications have a problem in gauging the knowledge and expertise of end-users. The developer must therefore design the interface to the system so that the use thereof is sufficiently intuitive to require the minimum of background knowledge. Developers need to enhance the usability of their web sites so that incidental users will find the site rewarding and enticing, and encourage them to explore further. This paper will explore the role of feedback as a valuable tool in enhancing the interpretability of e-commerce applications. We discuss firstly how applications may be designed to make use of an enriched model of application feedback, and secondly how developers may evaluate their sites so as to gauge the efficacy of the currently provided feedback. We propose a novel method for analysing the purchasing phase of the e-commerce experience. We then introduce an evaluation method for determining whether a particular site provides adequate feedback or not. Three sites were evaluated using the proposed model, and the results of this evaluation are analysed.

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