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Effectiveness from User’s Standpoint
Knowing the customer has nowadays prevailed as the ultimate business objective. The reasonbehind this is that by knowing the customer you also know the way to understand and satisfy
individual needs. At this point, we should address the topic of user-friendly interaction and
usability, as each user cannot be separated from human nature. In our context and by attempting to
project to the e-Commerce domain the general factors that assure usability—as defined in the human
computer interaction domain (Nielsen, 1993)—an e-Shop should (Markellos et al., 2001):
Be easy to learn. The e-Shop must be easy to navigate and
users - even those that are novice Web users - shouldn’t find it difficult or confusing to interact
with it. Taken to the next level, this means that users should have a sense of control both on
where they are currently located and what they should do in order to get to the place they want to
go.
Be easy to recall. This attribute in the case of e-Shops
should be considered as a default requirement because e-Shops are “walk-up-and-use” applications,
thus usage experience should not be required. Moreover, the e-Shop must be easy to remember in
another sense as well: it should have an easy to recall URL, use consistent navigation controls and
communicate at every touch point (which practically means every page of the Web site) the identity
and the profile of the brand behind it.[3] All these elements contribute
greatly in creating a feeling of familiarity, comfort and trust. The guideline by Zemke and
Connellan (2001) is quite straight forward: “Put your personality into
every touchpoint—branding is what elevates you from average and acceptable to memorable. It is the
first step toward loyalty.”
Be efficient. The efficiency in the context of e-Commerce
means easy and fast product(s) identification and order submission. It is a fact that customers are
annoyed with the little struggles that are too frequently part and parcel of doing business online.
Their expectations are simple and their choices are infinite. According to Zemke and Connellan
(2001), e-Shops should adapt to the ETDBW
(Easy-To-Do-Business-With) thinking approach: the point is how we make it simple and
effortless for customers to find and use a certain e-Shop, and only then to deal with questions of
style and design. ETDBW thinking suggests that all those involved in the e-Shop’s decision making
should think first like a customer and last like a technical wizard. Moreover, since an e-purchase
completes not at the point of charging the customer’s credit card but at the point when the
customer receives the ordered item, efficiency requires delivery to be on time. This means that
e-Shops must practice reliability and provide customer support prior to, during and after
sales.
Prevent errors from occurring and provide recovery
mechanisms. It is essential to prevent or to eliminate errors occurring when shopping
online. In the Web environment, as errors we regard broken links, missing images, missing product
details, as well as server failures or long delays due to heavy traffic and any other circumstance
that results in a negative customer experience and poor service. We should though also consider as
errors all unsuccessful searches that return no results pages. Recovery in this case means that
these pages should help customers revise their queries or suggest some kind of solution. There are
cases where the e-Shop cannot satisfy a certain product need and this should also be communicated
clearly and as soon as possible, so that the customer’s time online is not wasted and is treated
with respect.
Provide subjective satisfaction to the customer.
Subjective satisfaction is by definition vague and thus difficult to assure and hard (if not
impossible) to measure. A quite comprehensive approach to identifying a set of key features that
can guarantee—when implemented well—a positive customer experience is known as the 7Cs (Kearney,
1999) and is introduced and explained in
Figure
14-3. Missing from the 7Cs approach is what Vredenburg et al. (2002) reference as
“an intuitive and engaging total
customer experience,” in their book on UCD. According to them, there was a time when
usable meant the absence of obvious user problems. However, in today’s e-Commerce world, the online
experience should be such that it accommodates easily what users want to do and provides a design
that is pleasant and enjoyable (Jordan, 2000). In other words, usability does not imply boring and
visually poor Web environments. On the contrary, it allows engaging experiences but raises the bar
even higher by requiring intuitiveness (thus compensating for
what may not be totally familiar).
Figure 14-3: 7Cs framework
(Kearney, 1999)
In the following two sections we investigate what constitutes an effective catalog and
shopping cart for the online shopper and we suggest a set of design guidelines that IT specialists
and shop owners should bear in mind while outlining and implementing an e-Shopping environment. Our
main objective is to close the gap between what shop owners pursue, what IT people regard as
required and what Web users need, enjoy and can actually use easily and fast when shopping
online.[3]eCommerce Trust Study. (n.d.). Cheskin Research/Studio Archetype
Sapient. Retrieved from:
http://www.sapiend.com/cheskin
