Usability attributes and evaluation methods for M-commerce websites

Abstract

The usability of Mobile commerce (M-commerce) websites is a key parameter in determining the success of M-commerce businesses. Literature shows that numerous M-commerce websites have failed to attract customers due to the poor usability of user interfaces. In order to offer superior quality shopping experiences to consumers, it is thus essential to determine the appropriate attributes of successful user interfaces as well as the evaluation methods which should be employed to measure them. The available research resources consulted contained few references to usability evaluation, the identification of appropriate attributes as well as evaluation methods to be used for M-commerce applications. Consequently, the researcher proposes a new usability model for M-commerce websites to determine the suitability of attributes to be included in the proposed model for M-commerce websites. This research work aims to address the imbalance in literature by determining the appropriate attributes of the proposed usability model for usability evaluations of M-commerce applications. In an effort to validate the proposed usability model, an appropriate method to assess usability was formulated to evaluate existing M-commerce websites. The inappropriate application of usability methods will result in major usability problems which will, in turn, negatively impact users’ experiences. To facilitate improved M-commerce user experiences, this study set out to determine appropriate attributes of usability model as well as formulate a domain-specific usability evaluation method to ascertain the usability of said websites. The research work applied a combination of a user-based evaluation method and the proposed domain-specific evaluation method to evaluate the usability of four selected M-commerce websites. The outcomes of the study, which aided in the development of a framework for the usability evaluation of M-commerce websites, highlighted the effectiveness of the methods. Therefore, the proposed framework will prove useful to both new, and well-established M-commerce providers, as it will help guide usability professionals as to which evaluation method to choose for a specific usability problem area when evaluating the usability of M-commerce websites.