Electronic Commerce Usability

This book investigates whether usability aspects affect the design and development of the browsing experience in e-commerce applications. The book is limited to the generic e-commerce activities and does not address the financial perspective. As background the book studies the e-commerce domain, interaction design and systems development methodologies. Within a quasi-experimental research design the study then developed two experimental websites to test the hypotheses that usability principles of consistency, structured information and navigation affect the users of a website: one adhering and one violating these principles. Respondents were required to record their perceptions of both using a questionnaire. The study’s found that usability issues had a minimal influence on the perceived success of the websites. It is thus only one of many factors that needs to be considered in the design and development of a successful e-commerce website, and cannot be treated as an isolated add-on. This book has been written in a non technical fashion. Managers, computer systems developers, usability engineers, electronic commerce companies and researchers will find this book of interest.