Chapter 9 Website Evaluation and Usability Testing

Awad –Electronic Commerce 2/e © 2004 Pearson Prentice Hall 2 OBJECTIVES Anatomy of A Site What Makes A Website Usable? Role of Web Administrator

Awad –Electronic Commerce 2/e © 2004 Pearson Prentice Hall 3 ANATOMY OF A SITE Use of Colors Site Evaluation Criteria Web Personalization

Awad –Electronic Commerce 2/e © 2004 Pearson Prentice Hall 4 USE OF COLORS ColorPsychological Effects RedPower, energy, passion, danger BlueTrust, conservation, security YellowOptimism, hope WhitePurity, precision, innocence BlackSophistication, mystery, elegance

Awad –Electronic Commerce 2/e © 2004 Pearson Prentice Hall 5 SITE EVALUATION CRITERIA Color Type and Shapes of Icons Page Content Service Offered Primary Focus Ancillaries Site Classification

Awad –Electronic Commerce 2/e © 2004 Pearson Prentice Hall 6 SITE EVALUATION CRITERIA (Cont’d) Professionalism Speed Consistency Personalization Security Scalability

Awad –Electronic Commerce 2/e © 2004 Pearson Prentice Hall 7 WEB PERSONALIZATION Cookies Collaborative-filtering Software Check Boxes User-based Personalization

Awad –Electronic Commerce 2/e © 2004 Pearson Prentice Hall 8 WHAT’S THE BIG FUSS OVER SOME COOKIES? Deleting and Rejecting Cookies Privacy Concerns

Awad –Electronic Commerce 2/e © 2004 Pearson Prentice Hall 9 WHAT MAKES A WEB SITE USABLE? SourcesWhat Users Are Seeking Forrester ResearchHigh-quality Content Ease of Use Quick to Download Frequent Site Update Spool’s StudyInformation Kahle’s StudySpecific Information

Awad –Electronic Commerce 2/e © 2004 Pearson Prentice Hall 10 USABILITY TESTING GUIDELINES Decide on a writing style and stick to it Give visitors what they are looking for Show class Keep the big picture in mind for usability Make the site easy to navigate Focus on content before graphics

Awad –Electronic Commerce 2/e © 2004 Pearson Prentice Hall 11 USABILITY TESTING GUIDELINES (Cont’d) Make your text scanable Be careful about flashy marketing language Encourage visitor feedback Test, test and test! Remember: Conciseness, Scanability & Objectivity

Awad –Electronic Commerce 2/e © 2004 Pearson Prentice Hall 12 RELIABILITY TESTING Provide system backup Install a disk-mirroring feature Ensure that the system hardware is “fault- tolerant”

Awad –Electronic Commerce 2/e © 2004 Pearson Prentice Hall 13 MANAGING IMAGES & COLOR Readability Testing GIFs vs. JPEGs Use of Cache Use of Links Role of the Web Server

Awad –Electronic Commerce 2/e © 2004 Pearson Prentice Hall 14 ROLE OF WEB ADMINISTRATOR Database Server Application Server Web Server Special-purpose Servers for Security Internet Bandwidth Internet Performance Status

Chapter 9 Website Evaluation and Usability Testing