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Towards a Framework for E-Commerce Usability

SHAWREN SINGH AND PAULA KOTZ University of South Africa _______________________________________________________________________________________________


E-Commerce will most probably reshape the South African business world, as is happening in the rest of the world. Government organizations, large corporations, medium and small business, are all now actively trying to establish a presence of some kind on the World Wide Web. This paper describes research into establishing the use of human-computer interaction principles in the development of e-commerce applications in the South African context. It also describes the initial outcomes of an ongoing study. Categories and Subject Descriptors: H.5.2 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: User Interfaces Screen design; Style guides; D.2.2 [Software Engineering]: Design Tools and Techniques User interface; H.1.2 [Models and Principles]: User/Machine System Human factors; J.1 [Computer Applications]: Administrative data processing Business General Terms: Design, Experimentation, Human Factors, Standardization Additional Key Words and Phrases: Human-computer interaction, E-commerce, Usability

________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1. INTRODUCTION South Africa is a low to middle-income, developing country with an abundant supply of resources, well-developed financial, legal, communications, energy and transport sectors, a stock exchange that ranks among the 10 largest in the world, and a modern infrastructure supporting an efficient distribution of goods to major urban centres throughout the region. However, growth has not been strong enough to cut into the 30% unemployment, and daunting economic problems remain from the apartheid era, especially the problem of poverty and the lack of educational and economic empowerment among the disadvantaged groups. Other problems are crime, corruption and HIV/AIDS [Central Intelligence Agency 2001]. Designing e-commerce (EC) web sites in this environment is a challenge. All these are further complicated by the language and cultural diversity of the people of SA. The purpose of this paper is to report on the first results in the establishment of an approach to the design of EC sites for a typical South African (SA), multicultural and multilingual society. This approach aims to provide guidelines within the framework of the principles of human-computer interaction (HCI), over and above those of established good systems development approaches. EC is a special activity involving transaction processing and interactivity development. The South African Green Paper on EC [Central Government 2000] is divided into four categories. Each category contains key issues or areas of concern that need serious consideration in EC policy formulation: the need for confidence in the security and privacy of transactions performed electronically; the need to enhance the information infrastructure for electronic commerce; the need to establish rules that will govern electronic commerce; the need to extend the opportunities of EC to the entire population. EC that does not give the user an experience will not thrive [Brandt 1999]. The traditional approaches of soliciting sales in brick-and-mortar commerce, such as atmosphere, placement of goods, lighting, etc., do not transfer to online commerce. It is interaction and participation that are the emotional hooks for EC, and the developers of EC sites should bear this in mind. Ideas on how to accomplish this are beginning to be explored. In order to establish a set of best practices for the development of EC sites for the SA context, without only echoing the technologies of developed countries, we are conducting a series of experiments to establish how SA users interact with, and approach EC applications. One of the aspects we will investigate is the compilation of a set of SouthAfricanised usability guidelines/principles. The foundation of this framework will be a set of homogeneous style sheets and detailed guidelines for the development of EC site interfaces. The data from all these experiments will be combined and analysed for differences between nave, novice, skilled and expert users, as well as users from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. We distinguish between nave and novice users since every time a person, no matter how expert ________________________________________________________________________________________________
Author Addresses: S. Singh, Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, University of South Africa, P O Box 392, UNISA, 0003, South Africa; singhs@unisa.ac.za. P. Kotz, Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, University of South Africa, P O Box 392, UNISA, 0003, South Africa; kotzep@unisa.ac.za. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage, that the copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than SAICSIT or the ACM must be honoured. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. 2002 SAICSIT Proceedings of SAICSIT 2002, Pages 2 10

Towards a Framework for E-Commerce Usability

(s)he is, visits a new web page, (s)he can be considered a novice user for that website. The results of these will be used to develop a life cycle approach to the development of EC, integrated with the principles of human-computer interaction (HCI) and usability. In this paper we will be focus on two of these experiments. We introduce our arguments in Section 2 by highlighting our understanding of the term e-commerce, followed by an introduction to the concept of usability and how it might inform the development of EC sites in Section 3. Section 4 describes a pilot study in which subjects were interrupted and their recovery process recorded. This is followed in Section 5 by preliminary results of an experiment that looked at web interface design. Section 6 suggests an approach that can be followed in the development of EC sites. 2. E-COMMERCE EC comprises business processes that shift transactions to the Internet or some other non-proprietary, web-based system [US Department of Commerce 1999]. There are different types of EC such as e-shopping, e-banking and e-investments. Our example will focus on e-shopping. An e-shopping task has two main phases: the look, see and decide phase (LSD), and the checkout phase [Renaud et al. 2001]. The LSD allows the user to browse, while a commitment to buy takes place in the checkout phase: Look, See and Decide: This stage will typically be used to look at available products, compare them, and then make a decision about whether or not to purchase products. This may be done once or more often until the consumer has found products that satisfy his or her needs. This phase is intensely user-driven because the user is looking at and assimilating information continuously. It has the following substages, which can be traversed iteratively and in varying sequences: welcome, search, browse, and choose. Checkout: When the users trigger this stage they have made their choice of offered products and have decided to make a purchase. They now have to provide certain details, such as their address and credit card details. This stage is system-driven and changes the paradigm of the interaction process from user initiative to system initiative. Feedback is of critical importance during this stage - users who feel that they have lost control can simply leave the site without any embarrassment unlike a user who is standing at a checkout till in a supermarket. This stage is typically composed of at least the following steps, which should be navigated in a serial fashion: identifying the user, where the delivery should take place, how it should take place, payment, confirmation of order and completion (closure). EC will only be encouraged if the infrastructure supports the technology, as in the telecommunications initiative to encourage the use of the Internet (call more). As an on-line customer you may not feel adequately protected and choose to research your product then buy off-line. A digital divide may arise in the business world, where the larger, wellestablished companies effectively use the technology, forcing small and medium companies to adapt or die. Governmental regulation and legal issues would affect EC. For example when is a digital contact concluded? Wang [1999] reports that medium and small business concerns often do not fully understand the concept of information systems and their ability to facilitate electronic commerce. Small firms are at times intimidated by the technology, are frequently concerned about the ability of outsiders to tap into the workings of a small firm via computers, and often lack the time or resources to develop an understanding of how information systems can help them. 3. USABILITY Meeting the needs of users who demand power without complication has made the computer industry increasingly sensitive to the design of the user interface. The user interface could be the most important determinant of success for EC. In fact, to many users, the interface is the system [Turban and Aronson 1998]. In the past, implementations of business software involved acquiring (purchasing) a piece of software in order to install and use an interface. The World Wide Web (WWW) and its associated standardized technologies have changed this and now provide the interface before transactions are deployed. Usability is generally regarded as ensuring that interactive products, such as e-commerce applications, are easy to learn, effective to use, and enjoyable from the users perspective, and involves the optimisation of user interaction with these interactive products [Preece et al. 2002]. Over time, several researchers have produced sets of generic usability principles, which can be used in improving EC web sites as well as showing how to test usability and how to design software products, bearing usability in mind [for example Dix et al. 1998; Nielsen 1993; Cato 2001; Mayhew 1999; Nielsen 2000; Preece et al. 1994; Shneiderman 1998; Shneiderman 2000; Thimbleby 1990; Badre 2002; Preece et al. 2002]. These principles include aspects such as effectiveness, efficiency, safety, utility, learnability, flexibility, robustness, memorability, etc. These usability principles are, however, fairly broad and general and in some cases very vague. It is generally difficult for the non-usability expert or the novice to apply these principles to a particular domain and context-specific situation, taking into account the unique factors that give rise to problems in that domain. For example, if you are trying
Proceedings of SAICSIT 2002

S Singh and P Kotze

to design an EC site to entice a prospective surfer to stop browsing and make a purchase, the situation will be very different from someone who is doing Internet banking, which is again vastly different from someone using an on-line library catalogue system. The design of a site for a Pick n Pay chain store, ABSA Bank, and Pretoria University Library should therefore be approached differently. Large mega companies have the resources, both human and capital, to invest in the development of EC web sites. On the other hand small, medium and micro enterprises (SMME) are competing for scarce resources from a small or non-existent pool. SMMEs cannot afford the luxury of hiring professional web designers, with their related costs. Typically, an SMME will get web exposure because some university/technikon student (IS/CS/IT) or even worse, some enthusiastic amateur offered to design the site for them at a small cost. The aim of this research is to provide a usability life cycle approach to designing EC sites, within the context of HCI principles. It aims to provide a canned solution/recipe for the design of EC web sites. This will also be helpful to large companies where web site design is seen as an advertising issue, the site must pay for itself [flashing banner, see Nielsen 1996 and Nielsen 2000] or otherwise it is of no value to the company. This mentality breeds contention between the usability advocates and the marketing division. It may be argued that the Web is a non-proprietary domain that should not have any restrictions imposed on it [Singh and Erwin 2002]. This may be true for developed countries that have the technology and infrastructure to support their digital economies. In a developing country like SA, with a lack of human capital (a small pool of welltrained IT personnel), this is not the case. Multicultural issues and vastly different technological experiences characterize the SA society. Well-defined procedures might contribute to the development, growth and success of the digital economy. 4. E-SHOPPING OBSERVATION EXPERIMENT A field study was conducted to evaluate the effect of changing features and interruptions on web users. A simple observation approach [Dix et al. 1998; Nielsen 1993] was used with a group of nine subjects (Nielsen [1993], suggests a group of three or more subjects). The sample group was chosen from a group of SA students with diverse educational, cultural and language (English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Sotho) backgrounds. The test subjects were observed in their natural study environment. Some of the major usability principles proposed by [Dix et al. 1998] have a direct bearing on successful EC and were addressed in this experiment to determine the extent of their applicability. These usability principles include familiarity, consistency, observability, task conformance, recoverability, and so forth. 4.3 The Task Subjects were asked to find and buy books on VW Beetles from Amazon.com. All subjects were interrupted during the checkout phase of the task for between 5 to 10 minutes (they were asked questions about themselves, favourite movie, world peace, etc.), and then asked to proceed with their task. This interruption was geared at identifying how users recover from an interruption using the web features (like the back button on the browser), or the features provided on the particular website, and how well the users can cope with the features provided. An additional purpose was to establish the reason for problems, and to ascertain which of these problems could be attributed to the violation of usability principles. Except for two subjects who recovered their task without any problem after the interruption, all the others experienced problems. Four subjects clicked on the back button of the browser to retrace their path. The other three subjects chose to restart the entire process. None of the subjects bothered to scroll down to the bottom of the page where Amazon.com does provide a history track of ones movement through the checkout phase as well as the categories visited. 4.3 Observations The CAR tab on the main Amazon page proved to be a distraction to all the subjects except for the two experienced users. Subjects, immediately on entering the site, scanned the page looking for a word associated with the subject matter (cars), and clicked on the CAR tab (4 subjects). By doing this, a page on car sales was displayed, as well as a pop-up window that tried to entice the user to purchase a wireless web cam. Subjects struggled to get back to their train of thought (about buying a book) and to proceed with the chosen task. This type of sidetracking can also be classified as a type of interruption. Once the subjects reached the correct section of the website (for buying books), processing the transaction of purchasing the books, invariably resulted in a number of error messages as well. Messages to the users were cryptic, and often misunderstood, especially if the user was not familiar with Americanised or web terminology. Because the subjects could not understand the context, some never recovered from the problems they experienced. One novice user commented: I am an idiot, based on the error message there is a problem with your order misinterpreting the command as criticism of the person, and despite trying was unable to solve the problem.

Proceedings of SAICSIT 2002

Towards a Framework for E-Commerce Usability

RESPONDENT GROUP Respondent Set 1

FIRST SITE ASSESSED SITE A violating HCI and Usability Guidelines

SECOND SITE ASSESSED

SITE B Adhering to HCI and Usability Guidelines

Respondent Set 2

SITE B Adhering to HCI and Usability Guidelines

SITE A violating HCI and Usability Guidelines

Figure 1. Respondents Matrix

During the checkout phase of the transaction another user experienced the problem of cannot find specific page. One user commented Eeerwhat does this mean? One user had the following comments. The site has changed, I did it differently the last time! and proprietary software is needed, e.g. electronic wallet to complete the transactions. The latter software was not available and the user just gave up a novice would not know what caused the problem and would have tried to continue without success. Another user commented that there was too much of information to interpret. 4.3 Interim Outcomes We found that users from different expertise levels use the sites in a different way and might experience different types of difficulties (illustrated by the car problem). They also react and recover in different ways after interruptions (if ever). The language used to translate the messages from the system must be comprehensible to the background of the planned user group some of the Americanised concepts so often used in interactive systems, are foreign and could be misunderstood by the average SA user. Many of the usability principles suggested by Dix [1998] and Shneiderman [1998], such as learnability, flexibility, robustness, recognition of diversity, offer informative feedback and support internal locus of control, have been violated by the website design. 5. QUESTIONNAIRE EXPERIMENT Based on the review of literature, on-line resources, personal communication and pilot studies, the following features were identified for investigation in the design of EC web sites: instructions, speed of web site, communication (e-mail, fax, phone), appearance and navigation. The investigation was done through the design of two websites and a questionnaire to assess these sites. The large sample of subjects for the experiment was selected using the judgment sampling [Groebner and Shannon 1990]. This study is aimed at the Net Generation (N-Gen)[Tapscott 2000]. N-Gen refers to the generation of people who are between the ages of 2 and 22, not just those who are active on the Internet. The experiment was designed in the following way: Site A (see Figure 2) broke usability and HCI rules. The principles that were broken were: Consistency this refers to designing interfaces to have similar operations and use similar elements for achieving similar tasks [Preece et al. 2002]. The site was illogically designed with poor spelling and grammar usage. Navigation this refers to avoiding orphan pages, long pages with excessive white space that force scrolling, narrow, deep, hierarchical menus that force users to burrow deep into the menu structure, and non-standard link colours, as well as providing navigation support, such as a strong site map that is always present. , There should also be a consistent look and feel for navigation and information design [Preece et al. 2002]. Navigation was unstructured and totally linear in Site A. Structured Information information did not follow a structured approach and random bits of trivial information were provided. Site B (see Figure 3) followed usability and HCI rules, taking the guidelines of the usability principles into consideration when designing the site.

Proceedings of SAICSIT 2002

S Singh and P Kotze

Figure 2. Site A The questionnaire consisted of the following sections: demographic information about the respondents; a section to assess computer experience; a set of instructions for assessing the first website (either Site A or B), and 32 statements each on a 5-point Likertscale relating to the first website; respondents comments on the first website; a further set of instructions for assessing the second website (either site B or A), and 32 statements each on a 5point Likert-scale and respondents comments relating to the second website; and respondents comments on the second website. The respondents from each institution would look at site A and then site B, or vice versa. This allows for a fourquadrant metric to compare respondents answers (see Figure 1). Cross comparisons can be made across the matrix. An intrinsic part of the questionnaire is its ability to collect quantitative and qualitative data, giving the respondents the opportunity to comment on, or justify answers. The questionnaire has been distributed to the following academic institutions: University of Durban Westville, University of Natal, University of Western Cape, and Cape Technikon. Each of the institutions was assigned to a single category (either 1 or 2). 5.1 Preliminary Findings Page design is the most immediately visible part of Web design. With current browser technology, users are looking at a single page at a time (or, at most, two or three pages if they have a large screen with multiple windows open) [Nielsen 2000]. At this stage it is premature to report complete statistical results, since we are in the process of completing the recording of results. One can, however, already draw some conclusions and comment on the informal responses

Proceedings of SAICSIT 2002

Towards a Framework for E-Commerce Usability

Figure 3. Site B received, which can be discussed in terms of the usability principles to which they adhere. A few examples are illustrated below. 5.1.1 Comments on Site A 1. We have an obligation to make URLs understandable [Nielsen 2000], as well as hackable (URL-butchering as a shortcut). The following two comments on Site A indicate the opposite: the destination should be more helpful than Page004.html. navigation was not well organized, i.e. I did not know where I was going next. 2. The glossy look and feel of a web site, including language usage, should be professional [Dix 2001]: the professionalism of the site was bad. I found various grammar/spelling errors. 3. The statements below indicate that not only must the web site follow good usability practice, but also there must be a synergy in the marketing of the web pages. For maximum effectiveness of a website advertising experts should also be involved in the design of the site: the Digital Durban website doesnt have enough photo galleries which makes you more willing to visit the city there were no good pictures need to be more attractive this website is the dullest and terrible the website was very interesting and stimulating. However the website could be more colourful the pictures and text were congested, there should be a space in between it is boring, not stimulating at all. 4. Designers have to design web pages that are information rich, the strategy for designing these pages will depend on the target audience: it has insufficient information about Digital Durban. 5. The respondents scanned the web page and did not read in detail [Nielsen 2000]:
Proceedings of SAICSIT 2002

S Singh and P Kotze

6.

7. 8.

it is highly appreciated to find that you can find this website easily and easy to read Usability rules the Web. Simply stated, if the customer cannot find a product (or in this case is frustrated), then he or she will not buy it. The Web is the ultimate customer-empowering environment. He or she who clicks the mouse gets to decide everything. It is so easy to go elsewhere; all the competitors in the world are but a mouse click away [Nielsen 2000]: the website frustrated me and put me in a bad mood. The Web is not like a book, which follows a predefined sequence. The Web is not linear; therefore we have to change our writing style to suit the Web, i.e. a suitable linking strategy through the document [Nielsen, 2000]: navigation was totally linear and highly frustrating. We should design web pages that reflect South Africa, this may create a scenes of familiarity for the users. It looks as though it is not Durban. It is somehow a reflection of New York City, which I find disturbing I am a strong believer in cultivating, producing South African beauty. What I saw in that web page is a refraction of New York City. That is the biggest problem with South Africa, it is always trying to copy America. How about being original for a change.

5.1.2 Comments on Site B (see appendix) 1. Users want logical, simple, quick downloading Web pages to get on with their task, and expect the pages to be user friendly. The statements below suggest that the principles of consistency, navigation and structured information were adhered to: nice and simple, not memorable, but served its purpose well the right amount of picture = the right speed the screens were very well organised in a logical order, i.e. menu on left of screen => worked its way down the menu. 2. The website did create some emotions, but it can not replicate the traditional brick-and-mortar environment. From the comments there were more negative statements then positive statements: since Ive never seen a lighthouse face-to-face, I would love to see it Durban is a lively city full of colours and people and places the website does no do this justice it made it look like Richards Bay in not an exciting place and really looks dull on the net, the pictures are not visible enough, the colours are terrible. A striking feature illustrated by these experiments is that despite respondents carrying out the same task of finding a particular item on the same type of web site, because of the change in the appearance and structure of the site, users were immediately relegated to the status of novices. Users had prior knowledge of what the web site should look like, but it had changed, frustrating a number of respondents. There seems to be a need for instant information gratification in prospective customers who visit websites with the purpose of gathering relevant usable information. Designers may design a website using good usability practices, but they do not get a pat on the back for it, rather they are expected to design it well. It is those aspects of the page that is not designed well that irritate surfers. The comments from respondents indicate that there is a definite cultural (institutional culture) and provincial cultural difference in responses. One finding with regard to multilingual issues is that first-language English respondents demanded a well-structured, organised, well-written, easy-to-use web site as opposed to second/thirdlanguage English respondents, who were prepared to spend some time and effort on accomplishing the set task. A consistent comment from respondents was that the site design was boring. It is difficult to get the user to fully appreciate the product/service without him/her having some first-hand experience of it [Brandt 1999]. In an artificial two-dimensional environment it is difficult to arouse the same emotions that a user would experience in a brick and mortar environment with its flashing lights, unique smells and (un)helpful shop assistants. It is going to be a challenge to solve the problem of boring web sites. It will take a unique blend of HCI and advertising genius to solve this problem a current trend is to give web customers some product free of charge. 5.1.3 Over all impressions A striking feature of this experiment is that, because respondents were able to compare the two sites at the same sitting, the respondents became much more critical of how they expect the second web site to perform, even when they were given the bad site first. They could see the difference that design according to HCI and usability principles made, and therefore demanded more. The aphorism that ignorance is bliss is therefore true given the differently designed web sites the respondents aggressively commented on what they considered as poor design.

Proceedings of SAICSIT 2002

Towards a Framework for E-Commerce Usability

6. ABCD APPROACH The ABCD approach is designed around the notion that knowing your target market, it would give the company a competitive advantage in the environment it is working in. The statement in section 5.1.1, bullet 8 suggests that knowing the target audience will give you that competitive advantage. As a preliminary result of the wider research project, the authors suggests the following approach to designing effective EC sites. The letters ABCD symbolize the grassroots approach, starting at the beginning: A stands for atmosphere. The organization should understand the atmosphere in the particular environment that it is operating in, i.e. socio-political, law, local customs, and the local languages spoken. B stands for build-up. It may be an electronic entity, but you have to build up a culture of trust between yourself and your customers, who may be in any part of the world. C stands for communication. Build up good communication lines between customers, suppliers and yourself. Being at a distance from the community that you do business with has the effect of dehumanizing the relationship. D stands for discipline. Work within the rules and regulations of the community. In an attempt to gain a basic understanding of the users, this ABCD approach was also used in the development processes for the last experiment: A the researcher pre-planned the use of a supervised, university student information centre. B respondents were congratulated and reassured of their value to this research. C after conducting the experiments, the importance of what they had just done was explained to the respondents. D the experiment was planned on a time scale of 45 minutes, that is the average university lecture time. The ABCD approach is therefore a simple approach that assists the company to assess the social environment in which it exists. 7. CONCLUSION Although SA designers should learn from established practices, they should not slavishly follow and echo the techniques of developed countries. Not all of these techniques and habits would be applicable in the SA context. The ABCD approach will attempt to assist developers of EC applications in SA with this process. In combination with a pragmatic development life cycle, combined with the principles of HCI, it aims to enrich the users experience of the web, by providing an interface tailored specifically to the diverse SA context. The preliminary results suggest that designers should approach EC in a context appropriate to the target audience. 8. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors acknowledge the help assistance of the following people: Shaun Pather (who at the time was at the University Durban Westville and is now at Cape Technikon), Stuart Warden (Cape Technikon), Prof. Geoff J. Erwin (Cape Technikon), Kobus Smith (University of the Western Cape), Prof. Andrew J Bytheway (University of the Western Cape) and Gabrielle Ford (University of Natal, Durban) for their assistance with the administration of the questionnaires. Thanks to Prof Alan Dix (Lancaster University) for assisting in the refinement of the questionnaire and Omesh Singh (AST Group) and Shanil D. Singh (Dow Chemicals Company: South Africa) for their keen insight. REFERENCES
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Proceedings of SAICSIT 2002

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