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Towards Appraising Online Stores

Towards Appraising Online Stores. Ernest Cachia Mark Micallef Software Engineering Process Improvement Research Group (SEPI). Introduction. Overall Goals. The First Step. Initial Targets. Identify most important quality attributes in e-commerce systems

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Towards Appraising Online Stores

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  1. Towards Appraising Online Stores Ernest Cachia Mark Micallef Software Engineering Process Improvement Research Group (SEPI)

  2. Introduction

  3. Overall Goals

  4. The First Step

  5. Initial Targets • Identify most important quality attributes in e-commerce systems • Limit Scope to the Online Store variety of E-Commerce Systems (for the time being) • Success of such systems depends largely on users accessing a website and buying products or services • Therefore, users’ opinions should be given a large weighting

  6. Overview of Activities • Research into existing work • Discovering how e-commerce systems differ from generic systems • Designing a questionnaire • Conduct a survey amongst 350 e-commerce users • Analysis of results • Extraction of important e-commerce attributes (and their importance ranking)

  7. How do E-Commerce Systems Differ?

  8. Why was this information required? • Identifying why e-commerce systems differ was an important step: • Further justifies the need for an e-commerce metrication framework • Allows us to identify quality attributes based on these differences • 5 main differences were identified

  9. How E-Commerce System Differ • Content Driven (Navigability) • Exposed to the world (Security) • Browser-Based (Portability) • Enormous User Base (Scalability, Multilinguality) • Frequent Change (Maintainability, Reliability)

  10. Survey Organisation

  11. Survey Design • Designed to rank importance of quality attributes defined above • Divided into two parts: • Section 1: Collection of demographic information about users • Section 2: Collection of information about which attributes are deemed most important by users

  12. Example Questions from Section 1 • Age Group • Main use of e-commerce (personal or business) • Education Level • Frequency of online shopping • Products/Services bought online • OS, Browser, Devices

  13. Example Questions from Section 2 • Abandoned Transactions • Reasons for abandoned transactions • “First Impression” Factors • Intentions when visiting an e-commerce site • Ranking of attributes/features

  14. Survey Results

  15. Our Sample Space • 350 Respondents • 94% of participants were under 50 years old • Browser usage, OS usage and Device usage compare to other surveys carried out

  16. Browsers

  17. Operating Systems

  18. Devices

  19. Most Popular Products

  20. Abandoned Transactions

  21. Reasons for Abandoned Transactions

  22. Security and Privacy Issues(1/3) • Security turned out to be an important factor • For example, when asked to identify a reason why they would prefer not to use e-commerce, users replied as follows…

  23. Security and Privacy Issues (2/3) • How sure would you have to be about a site’s security capabilities before you buy from it?

  24. Security and Privacy Issues (3/3) • When asked to rank the importance of quality attributes in order of importance, security received and average scored of 6.24 (out of a possible 7). • This made it the most important quality attribute as perceived by users of e-commerce systems • We recommended security as an essential quality attribute in e-commerce systems

  25. Portability Issues (1/4) • Refers to the extent to which a system is accessible from different operating systems, browser and devices • Participants ranked portability as the 5th most important attribute (out of 7) • Case for portability not too strong if one relies on the results of this survey

  26. Portability Issues (2/4) • 98% of respondents use WindowsTM -based OSs • Almost 93% use Desktop PCs • 95% use Internet ExplorerTM • Less than 4% of users who abandoned transactions did so because of compatibility problems

  27. Portability Issues (3/4) • Results seem to indicate that portability is not important • However one must be careful: • 88.7% of users will not change browsers so as to be able to view a particular site • A small percentage of customer lost due to lack portability might still amount to large amounts of lost revenue • New mobile technologies are likely increase the importance of portability issues in e-commerce

  28. Portability (4/4) • Portability is recommended as a necessary attribute in e-commerce systems • However, in the current environment, compatibility with dominant technologies would seem to ensure a sufficient reach

  29. Performance and Scalability (1/3) • Speed is important to users • 33% of users who abandoned transactions mid-way through did so because the site was too slow • Only 18.4% would remain unconditionally loyal to their favorite site if it became slow

  30. Performance and Scalability (2/3) • What is the most important “first impression” factor you look for in a site?

  31. Performance and Scalability (3/3) • Participants ranked performance as the 4th most important quality attribute • We are recommending Performance as an essential quality attribute

  32. Navigability (1/3) • Why did you abandon transactions mid-way through? Also more likely to simply find another site

  33. Navigability (2/3) • 72% of users know beforehand what they are looking for when visiting an online store • This indicates that search and navigation features are important • 30% of participants also chose navigation as their primary “first impression” factor

  34. Navigability (3/3) • Navigability was ranked as the 3rd most important attribute by users • We are recommending usability with an emphasis on navigability as an essential quality attribute in online stores

  35. Multi-Lingual Features • Not being recommended as an essential attribute • The importance of such features is highly dependant on the context in which an online store is operating • 51% of participants claim e-commerce systems could still be classified as a quality system if it had no multi-lingual features • Respondents ranked this feature in 6th place (out of 7)

  36. Low-Bandwidth Version of Site • Some e-commerce sites have a text-only or low-bandwidth version available • Useful for users with slow connections • 52.5% of participants deem such a feature unnecessary • Users ranked this attribute as the least important • Considering increasing popularity of broadband connections, we are not recommending this as a necessary attribute

  37. Ranking of Essential Attributes • Security • Reliability • Navigability • Performance • Portability

  38. Conclusions and Further Work

  39. Conclusions and Further Work • These results are an important first step to our overall goals • Since this research we have explored: • Information Architecture • Graph Theory • Security • Further work will include: • Investigation into each of the above attributes and how they can be measured • Development of a metrication framework that will combine metrics for different attributes together • Development of a list of guidelines • Incorporation of guidelines into framework

  40. Questions and Discussion

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