Customer needs in Web based interaction: A macro view of usability

Usable Web page design is critical for the acceptance and utility of the Internet. Pages with poor usability can have several negative effects. A recent email posting announced an “exciting, major advance ” on a certain web site. In that email, the improvements discussed were described as “more powerful, simpler, faster”, “easier-to-use, more logical navigation”, “in-depth and in-context information ” and so on. Even though all these descriptors seem important to a user, it is not clear as to whether any user can really relate to these descriptors and how related they are to each other. Our study was an attempt to understand this issue. We examined two retail and two airline industry web sites. The effect of having time limits when making transactions was also examined. Hence, there were two independent variables: Industry Type and Time Limit. Sixty-four native Hong Kong subjects aged 18 to 24 years participated in the study. These sixty-four participants were divided into two groups of thirty-two. One of the two groups had an overall time limit (15 minutes to perform all the assigned tasks) while the other group did not. Each participant was asked to use two websites (one from each industry). The analyses on the post-test questionnaires showed that web usability is governed by four important dimensions: Interaction Efficiency, Trust and Safety, Information Content and Access, and Input-Output. These four factors were able to explain most of the variation in the data. This finding has important implications in terms of website design as well as usability testing. The results may be used to simplify usability questionnaires thereby minimizing user-testing time and enhancing the user feedback information