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Though there are tools and templates for supporting the creation of usable
designs, there is still a significant amount of work that needs to be done to deter-
mine what usability means for a particular E-Commerce site. What may seem an
inconsequential design decision (e.g., animated logo on the top of each page),
may have dire consequences in keeping old and attracting new consumers to the
site. Unless these usability issues are addressed, we face an explosion of unusable
sites resulting in a “usability meltdown of the Web” (Nielson, 1999, p.66).
This chapter proposes a web usability assessment tool for providing insight
into the potential success of an E-Commerce site. This tool gathers information
about target users and the web site under study and produces a set of metrics
based on usability selection criteria. Our initial development efforts are summa-
rized in the following sections. The next section briefly explains a usability assess-
ment model that is the basis for tool development. The following section presents
an overview of the web usability assessment tool and its components. The next
section describes the tool and an assessment process that is associated with the
good use of our tool. The section following presents a simple example, and the last
section concludes the chapter with future research opportunities.
A USABILITY ASSESSMENT MODEL
A usability assessment model has been developed in order to identify a com-
prehensive set of usability components needed to evaluate various aspects of an
E-Commerce web site. The model, as shown in Figure 1, is comprised of aggre-
gated usability factors including page layout, design consistency, information
content, design standards, performance, and navigation.
Each of these fac-
tors is comprised of a set of usability attributes, which is further decomposed into
a set of usability elements. A usability attribute and its element set take into ac-
count behavioral, visual, and information content associated with consumer use of
the web site.