IT Matters

Usability and E-commerce

July 31st, 2005

A research study on customer satisfaction with online shopping has found that usability aspects (user friendly interface, interactivity, search capabilities) of the web site were only moderately important. The findings surprised the researchers themselves as previous research rated usability as critical for e-commerce sites.
The research was conducted among computer literate and net savvy under graduate students. The authors think this may be the cause for this rather contradictory finding.

The paper was published in the Journal of Electronic Commerce Research and can be found here (PDF)
Be warned though, academic papers are usually written for fellow academicians and do not make for easy reading by the general public. I shall soon post my take on this.

Entry Filed under: Usability