Usability Metrics for Measuring Usability of Business-to-Consumer (B2C) E-Commerce Sites

The growth of the e-commerce industry resulted in a tight competition on the Web among e-commerce firms. Therefore, in order for an e-commerce firm to survive, its site must be user-friendly. Unfortunately, many commercial web sites experience usability problems. The existence of usability flaws can be explained by inadequate usability testing of the user interface design of e-commerce sites. In many cases, usability testing was not performed at all. Key factors that result in limitations or elimination of traditional usability testing are high cost of usability testing and insufficient usability engineering skills of web designers and developers. To encourage and promote effective usability testing, a set of usability metrics that consists of multiple indexes was developed. Each of these indexes assesses usability of a particular aspect of the site. A set of factors affecting usability of each aspect was identified. However, not all factors have the same significance. Therefore, hypotheses regarding significance of these factors were constructed. The hypotheses were tested using a chi-square statistical analysis. The developed set of metrics enables web designers and developers to conduct effective usability evaluations and quantify usability of e-commerce sites at relatively low cost with minimal or no usability engineering skills.

[1]  Norbert J. Kubilus Designing an e-commerce site for users , 2000, CROS.

[2]  Ben Shneiderman,et al.  Designing trust into online experiences , 2000, CACM.

[3]  SalvendyGavriel,et al.  Customer-centered rules for design of e-commerce Web sites , 2003 .

[4]  Kent L. Norman,et al.  Development of an instrument measuring user satisfaction of the human-computer interface , 1988, CHI '88.

[5]  Shirley Ann Becker,et al.  A Global Perspective on Web Site Usability , 2001, IEEE Softw..

[6]  Florian N. Egger,et al.  "Trust me, I'm an online vendor": towards a model of trust for e-commerce system design , 2000, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[7]  Gustavo Rossi,et al.  Patterns for Adding Search Capabilities to Web Information Systems , 1999, EuroPLoP.

[8]  Fl Usa,et al.  Do Students Receive Adequate Training in HCI Field , 2004 .

[9]  Fabio Nemetz The missing link: multimedia and e-commerce , 2000, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[10]  Lynn Greiner,et al.  Usability 101 , 2007, NTWK.

[11]  Gustavo Rossi,et al.  Patterns for E-Commerce Applications , 2000, EuroPLoP.

[12]  Detmar W. Straub,et al.  Current Technological Impediments to Business-to-Consumer Electronic Commerce , 1999, Commun. Assoc. Inf. Syst..

[13]  Cynthia Calongne,et al.  Designing for web site usability , 2001 .

[14]  David W. Kane,et al.  Title: Usability Patterns for Applications on the World Wide Web , 1999 .

[15]  Luisa Mich,et al.  Evaluating and designing Web site quality , 2003 .

[16]  Paolo Coppola,et al.  Animated products as a navigation aid for e-commerce , 2000, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[17]  Jürgen Koenemann,et al.  A comparative usability evaluation of user interfaces for online product catalog , 2000, EC '00.

[18]  Gerald L. Lohse,et al.  Electronic shopping , 1998, CACM.

[19]  Gerald L. Lohse,et al.  Quantifying the effect of user interface design features on cyberstore traffic and sales , 1998, CHI.

[20]  Jianming Dong,et al.  A comparison of two current e-commerce sites , 1998, SIGDOC '98.

[21]  Nancy J. Wahl Student-run usability testing , 2000, Thirteenth Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training.

[22]  Paolo Paolini Hypermedia, the Web and Usability issues , 1999, Proceedings IEEE International Conference on Multimedia Computing and Systems.

[23]  Min-Hyung Choi,et al.  User interface guidelines for enhancing usability of airline travel agency e-commerce web sites , 2002, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[24]  Janice Anne Rohn Creating usable e-commerce sites , 1998, STAN.

[25]  Catherine Wallace,et al.  Human factors and e-commerce , 2002 .

[26]  Benjamin Keevil,et al.  Measuring the usability index of your Web site , 1998, SIGDOC '98.

[27]  Jakob Nielsen,et al.  User interface directions for the Web , 1999, CACM.

[28]  John Riedl,et al.  Recommender systems in e-commerce , 1999, EC '99.

[29]  Karen Renaud,et al.  Tailoring e-commerce sites to ease recovery after disruptions , 2001, 25th Annual International Computer Software and Applications Conference. COMPSAC 2001.

[30]  Franca Garzotto,et al.  Model-based heuristic evaluation of hypermedia usability , 1998, AVI '98.

[31]  Marti A. Hearst,et al.  Statistical profiles of highly-rated web sites , 2002, CHI.

[32]  P. Kotzé,et al.  Towards a framework for e-commerce usability , 2002 .

[33]  Nancy J. Lightner Evaluating e-commerce functionality with a focus on customer service , 2004, CACM.

[34]  Gerald L. Lohse,et al.  A Classification of Internet Retail Stores , 1997, Int. J. Electron. Commer..

[35]  Elizabeth Chang,et al.  An intelligent system based usability evaluation metric , 1997, Proceedings Intelligent Information Systems. IIS'97.

[36]  B. J. Fogg,et al.  Elements that affect Web credibility , 2000 .

[37]  Eric M. Schaffer,et al.  Web usability illustrated: breathing easier with your usable E-Commerce site , 1999 .

[38]  Lynette Barnard,et al.  A trust model for E-commerce in South Africa , 2005, South Afr. Comput. J..

[39]  Jakob Nielsen,et al.  Did poor usability kill e-commerce? , 2001 .

[40]  B. J. Fogg,et al.  What makes Web sites credible?: a report on a large quantitative study , 2001, CHI.

[41]  Ildemaro Araujo,et al.  Developing trust in internet commerce , 2003, CASCON.

[42]  Florence E. Mottay,et al.  Web Site Usability , 2001 .

[43]  Gavriel Salvendy,et al.  Customer-centered rules for design of e-commerce Web sites , 2003, CACM.

[44]  Jeff Sauro,et al.  A method to standardize usability metrics into a single score , 2005, CHI.