Assessing a Firm's Web Presence: A Heuristic Evaluation Procedure for the Measurement of Usability

By Ritu Agarwal, V. Venkatesh. Information systems research, 2002

988 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Web site usability is a critical metric for assessing the quality of a firm's Web presence. A measure of usability must not only provide a global rating for a specific Web site, ideally it should also illuminate specific strengths and weaknesses associated with site design. In this paper, we describe a heuristic evaluation procedure for examining the usability of Web sites. The procedure utilizes a comprehensive set of usability guidelines developed by Microsoft.We present the categories and subcategories comprising these guidelines, and discuss the development of an instrument that operationalizes the measurement of usability. The proposed instrument was tested in a heuristic evaluation study where 1,475 users rated multiple Web sites from four different industry sectors: airlines, online bookstores, automobile manufacturers, and car rental agencies. To enhance the external validity of the study, users were asked to assume the role of a consumer or an investor when assessing usability. Empirical results suggest that the evaluation procedure, the instrument, as well as the usability metric exhibit good properties. Implications of the findings for researchers, for Web site designers, and for heuristic evaluation methods in usability testing are offered.

Subfields: Information Systems and Management, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b38f5a3f1ee7c8dd9d86c632cae52f5fa2bec2e3

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In Information Systems and Management

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

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Citations in the corpus

Multi-dimensional students' evaluation of e-learning systems in the higher education context: An empirical investigation (2009, background): “Promotion Sethy (2008), Agarwal and Venkatesh (2002) Focus Group A2.”
Factors influencing the use of social media by SMEs and its performance outcomes (2015, background): “Among the various design characteristics, interactivity stands out as a key and distinguished factor that impacts users’ response to new technologies including web sites (Agarwal and Venkatesh, 2002; Jiang and Benbasat, 2007).”
Effects of Interactivity on Website Involvement and Purchase Intention (2010, background): “Among the various design characteristics, interactivity stands out as a key and distinguished factor that impacts web users’ response to a website (Agarwal and Venkatesh, 2002; Jiang and Benbasat, 2007).”
Trust and TAM in Online Shopping: An Integrated Model (2003, positive): “Agarwal and Venkatesh 2002; Aladwani and Palvia 2002; Loiacono 2000; Palmer 2002; Ranganathan and Ganapathy 2002; Torkzadeh and Dhillon 2002) as predictors of consumer acceptance.”
Increasing trust in mobile commerce through design aesthetics (2010, background): “Design aesthetics is an important tool to develop trust as effective website design attracts customers and gain their attentions (Agarwal & Venkatesh, 2002; Cyr, Kindra, & Dash, 2008).”
Taking "Fun and Games" Seriously: Proposing the Hedonic-Motivation System Adoption Model (HMSAM) (2012, background): “…empirical studies involving UMS and MMS have shown that PEOU plays a direct positive role in determining BIU (e.g., Agarwal & Karahanna, 2000; Agarwal & Venkatesh, 2002; Davis, 1989; Davis et al., 1989; Davis, Bagozzi, & Warshaw, 1992; Hsu & Lu, 2007; Koufaris, 2002; Saade & Bahli, 2005; Sun…”
The role of the technology acceptance model in explaining effects of image interactivity technology on consumer responses (2006, background): “Site design research illustrates that good layout, effective search engines, updated information, transparent navigational structures, simple checkout procedures, and user-friendly interfaces were important to consumers’ use of online shopping (Agarwal and Venkatesh, 2002; Devaraj et al., 2002; Lohs”
Facets of visual aesthetics (2010, background): “, van der Heijden, 2003) and content is probably the most important factor (Agarwal and Venkatesh, 2003).”
Colour appeal in website design within and across cultures: A multi-method evaluation (2010, background): “In alignment with other researchers (Agarwal and Venkatesh, 2002; Cronbach, 1971; Falk and Miller, 1992) in this investigation website satisfaction refers to overall contentment with the online experience.”