Web Systems Design and Online Consumer Behavior [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Summary and Discussion

This chapter reviews theories of Web interface designs. Through examining TRA, TAM, and
HCI/Usability, their strengths and limitations are identified. For the Web site interface design,
TAM and HCI/Usability are two most applicable theories. HCI shares the goal of achieving high
usability for users. Usability includes ease of use plus usefulness, which is articulated by TAM
theory. TAM yields consistently high-explained variance for why users use/accept systems.

This chapter also identifies and pools together four sets of factors influencing Web site
quality, which in turn affects customers’ perceptions, preferences, and intensions. These concepts
and factors can be useful for researchers to study relationships between Web site quality and its
related constructs. These factors and measures also have significant meaning for e-commerce Web
site designers and managers. An attractive e-commerce Web site starts with quality information. The
information provided in the Web site has to be accurate, informative, updated, and relevant to
customers’ needs.

A successful Web site not only contains sufficient and quality information, but also is user
friendly. A Web site should have a search facility which helps users to maintain a mental map of
the site and responds to the users’ search quickly. Furthermore, it is necessary not only to
protect the purchasers ethically and legally (i.e., trust), but also to provide caring and
individualized information to customers (i.e., empathy). Besides, a superior e-commerce Web site
also has an emotional dimension — attractor, which brings a human touch to the site. It is a
significant factor to attract visitors to revisit the site.

Guidelines for Web Interface Design

In designing an e-commerce Web site, a designer should consider not
only the software components, but also the capability of hardware. A Web user is likely to redirect
the Web browser to another Web site if the page that he/she tries to access is not fully loaded
within a tolerable length of time. For this reason, Clyde (2000) suggests online pages should be
kept simple with limited use of graphics. This conflicts with the multi-media information
requirements, and also limits the advancement of true two-way communications (Banks, 1997).
Therefore, besides using simple graphics, the speed of the hardware supporting the Web site also
needs to be considered.

In designing an e-commerce Web site, a more effective approach, which has been used in a
limited way on the Web, is to see from the customers’ perceptions (Katz et al., 1991; Weinberg,
2000). The physical design elements (i.e., type of information, links, layout, appearance, etc.)
are important but insufficient; it is the customers’ perception of a Web site that makes
differences. For example, if a Web user perceives the loading time of a Web site to be intolerable,
the user will direct the Web browser elsewhere and potentially, will not purchase any of the
products. However, in circumstances where the feedback is provided during the loading, the
tolerance of delay is significantly higher (e.g., an icon that indicates the proportion of
information that has been loaded appears near the bottom of a Web browser).

Since trading partner trust or interpersonal trust is difficult to create for online B2C
customers, the Web designer/managers should actively create an environment to enhance trust from a
technological perspective. E-commerce vendors should adhere to technical standards, security
procedures, and protection mechanisms that are conducive to supporting transactions. Trust can be
enhanced by such mechanisms as digital signatures, encryptions, authorizations, and best business
practices (Pavlou, 2001). Such mechanisms can facilitate customers’ confident expectations toward a
favorable outcome of the transactions in regards to the uncertainty of the technology
infrastructure and control mechanisms.

In summary, for Web site developers and managers, the following guidelines are suggested: (1)
Evaluate existing similar sites to gain insights into the behavior of a system and its users; (2)
Compare design alternatives to determine the most efficient interface layout and the best
representation; (3) Use the factors/measures developed in this chapter so that the usability goals
can be specified quantitatively and competing alternatives can be compared; and (4) Check for
conformance to interface style standards with proper design techniques.