An investigation into the influence of usability on the development of the browsing experience of electronic commerce applications
Singh, Shawren
We investigate whether usability aspects affect the design and development of the browsing
experience in electronic commerce applications. The study is limited to the generic electronic
commerce activities and does not address the financial perspective. As background we studied the
electronic commerce domain, interaction design and information systems development
methodologies. Within a quasi-experimental research design we then developed two experimental
websites to test our hypotheses that the 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. We 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 electronic commerce
website, and cannot be treated as an isolated add-on.
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