e-Commerce Success?

e-Commerce Success?

by Dr. Bob Bailey

April, 2000

What percent of the time do users find what they are looking for when using the Internet or corporate Intranet?

e-Commerce Success? 1

Baca and Cassidy at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico re-designed Sandia's intranet home page. The website had been used for about five years with only minor modifications. Users were complaining that they were unable to find information.

The designers set a usability objective that after the re-design users would be able to locate desired information 80% of the time. After making several changes to the website, users were able to successfully complete only 73% of searches, with an average completion time of 113 seconds. They then made additional changes that finally improved the success rate up to 84%, with an average completion time of 57 seconds.

e-Commerce Success? 2

In another study at the Sandia National Laboratories, reported by Grose, Jean-Pierre, Miller and Goff, an intranet website was improved that was receiving little use. Before beginning the re- design, they set a usability goal of users being able to find information at least 80% of the time, and in less than an average of 120 seconds.

They tested typical users on an initial prototype, and found that users succeeded in finding the desired information only 75% of the time, and took an average of 90 seconds to find the information.

They revised and tested the prototype five more times. They reported that the time to complete the test items dropped over the several tests, but the success rate stayed at about 80%. This success rate seemed to be acceptable because it compared favorably with similar testing on commercial Internet sites.

e-Commerce Success? 3

Fath and Henneman at the NCR Human Interface Technology Center in Atlanta, Georgia evaluated four websites that are commonly used for online shopping. They noted that the four websites were typical of those currently being used for e-commerce. Participants performed several shopping tasks on the websites while being observed by usability specialists.

In three of the websites, participants were able to complete only about half of the standard shopping tasks, and about 1/3 of the tasks could not be completed at all - even with assistance. In the fourth website, participants completed 84% of the shopping tasks.

These success rates seem to be very low. Do they represent a lowering of usability standards? Or do they quantify the relatively mediocre usability level that is currently acceptable when designing and using websites? How do your websites compare?

References

Baca, B. and Cassidy, A., Intranet development and design that works, Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society – 1999, 777-790 (1999).

Fath J.L. and Henneman, R.L., On the development of user interface design guidelines for electronic commerce, Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society -- 1999, 192-198(1999).

Grose, E., Jean-Pierre, S., Miller, D. and Goff, R., Applying usability methods to a large intranet site, Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society – 1999, 762-766 (1999).