Measuring the usability of online stores

Abstract

As online shopping turnover continues to increase year after year, more and more business are rushing to establish an online presence. In a previous publication, the authors of this paper identified usability as being one of the attributes which most influence the success of an e-commerce systems. This paper explores the issues involved in measuring the usability of e-commerce systems and presents a usability measurement framework specifically tailored to online stores. The framework provides a quick way to evaluate the usability of online stores through easily automatable mathematical analysis of a site’s structure and visual layout, followed by a short checklist to assure that essential usability criteria have been met. References are made to a number of research exercises carried out by the authors amongst online shoppers and case studies of well-known e-commerce sites are also presented.