Identify the website or product you have been assigned

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Running Head: Usability Business Case Study

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Running Head: Usability Business Case Study

Week 4 Website Usability Study

1. Identify the website or product you have been assigned (including a screenshot), and briefly describe the reason you selected the section of the Website evaluated.

eBay is a Silicon Valley based e-commerce company founded in 1995 offering consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer services. It was founded before the dot com bubble and is one of the few companies that survived the dot com bubble burst and continues to exist today. eBay generates multi-billion dollar revenue across the globe, and its core business is its website, ebay.com, along with its payment platform. Businesses of all sizes can sell their products and services, host auctions, and allow buyers to buy products free of service charge. eBay's primary competitor is Amazon, another e-commerce giant with a massive footprint in the global market founded during the same period. Though eBay lost to Amazon on its e-commerce front due to Amazon having better adoption and offerings, eBay is the number one preference for auctioneers.

We choose eBay's sell section in this study because it is the foundation of eBay's multi-billion dollar business and has nearly 25 million registered sellers using the platform. The increase in popularity of social networking platforms is causing eBay to lose its potential customers to Facebook, which introduced its marketplace in 2016. Besides Facebook, the threat of Amazon storming back into the auction domain of e-commerce continues to loom over eBay. To avoid losing to competition and stay ahead in the game, eBay has to continue providing technically robust platforms and offer exceptional user experience to new and seasoned sellers alike. A good user experience will help eBay retain its customers and capitalize on its market share.

From Nielsen's (2011) research, we have seen that the users' experience during the first few seconds (~ 10 seconds) on a web page determines whether they will continue to use the website or leave. The 10-second window is the bare minimum time eBay needs to focus on to keep their new/potential sellers engaged. Users are likely to leave the website even after 20 seconds, but according to Nielsen's (2011) research, they are likely to stay longer. This way, eBay has more probability of attracting and retaining new sellers and lower chances of losing them to its competitors (e.g., Amazon and Facebook).

Figure.1

2. Describe the scenario you used to focus your evaluation, and explain how you approached the site/product with respect to the usability heuristics.

Figure.2

As part of the heuristic evaluation of the selling website, I have created an account in Ebay.com. I had to go through several processes to set up the selling account. After done with signing up, I tried to sell the men's boot from an Australian brand company, but as a user of myself, I wanted to add the price in the tag where I cannot see or remember what price I have attached to make a sell for that product. On a boot image, I drew one circle which shows the left arrow button, which is one of the ten rules of the heuristic evaluation process. When clicking on that button, it did not perform any action on the website, which is a terrible user experience (Jeffries, R., 1991).

Figure.3

In the above image, I have checked as soon as I clicked on boot in the figure.2 image, I landed on the above page, which is connected through route, but it came to the bottom of the website, which is wrong as per the usability. There should be any Cancel/Back button on this page at the bottom of the top of the user thinks to cancel or go back to the selling page, but if the user wants to do that, then they have to use the browser back functionality and route back to the selling page and delete the order. This shows that this page lacks user control and freedom rule (Nielsen, J., 1990).

Figure.4

From figure 4, we can see that there is no navigation menu which shows the lack of user functionality. As I have mentioned in the above paragraph, there should be more user info if the user wants to perform any action on the page. This shows the lack of flexibility and efficiency use, which is one of the heuristic user interface design rules. If I were a user, I would find myself in darkness as there is not enough information if I want to navigate to the main home page or cart item to see what I have added to the cart for selling out.

Figure.5

In figure 5, there is much information about the product that we will auction. This shows the much info about the product bid amount and other offers we wanted to give to our buyers. The strange thing I have found on this feature is that when I tried to close the switch on auction, I could not do it, and it was the same with the Buy it now features. This shows that users cannot perform the successful action on that task they do not want to achieve, which is against the heuristic evolution rules.

3. Provide a detailed analysis of the usability flaws you found for this site, along with a) the heuristics each flaw violates, and b) an explanation of why this flaw violates those heuristics.

A usability issue is considered to be anything involved in any product or even website that causes a user to have an undesirable outcome. It is considered relatively easy to spot when the identified users have issues in the given interface. Making the usable kind of interface begins with comprehending what in the identified interface is leading to the issue and finding ways to fix them. Two usability issues are involved in the eBay website, and this will be illustrated comprehensively and most suitably along with the identification of the heuristics, each kind of flaw violates and a critical explanation of why the given type of flaw is involved in the violation of the given heuristics (Thampi et al., 2019). 

First and foremost, there is a lack of consistency. Consistency is associated with breeding familiarity. A user expects that the website components appear and function in a specific manner which is not the case with the eBay website. The way the details appear on the website is confusing and challenging to understand, making it hard to know the next phase to proceed from one point to the other. The information is not consistent in the entire website, which makes one at some point feel like they have navigated to a particular site. There is also the issue of information format on the same line of consistency. This is also associated with confusion while navigating through the website. 

Moreover, another issue is the one that relates to recognition instead of recall. Some of the elements and actions and the options for navigation purposes in the website are not visible, making it a requirement for any user to remember information from one part regarding the interface to another. The information needed to utilize the design, such as the menu items, should be visible or easily retrievable when required. The type of interfaces that promote recognition minimizes the cognitive effort needed from the users (Thampi et al., 2019). 

Another issue is on help as well as documentation. It is usually considered most appropriate that the identified system does not require additional explanation. However, it is vital to note that it may be essential to offer documentation that is necessary and key in assisting the users in having a comprehensive understanding of how to complete their identified tasks. This is not also integrated into the website. Help and documentation content must be easy to search and have a key focus on the user’s task, not having to go through numerous contacts and information before attaining the essential information needed by the users. It is vital to have the information concise and have a list of the concrete steps that need to be performed (Fletcher et al., 2013). 

4. Discuss some possible design recommendations that could improve the site, explaining how each recommended change would address the usability flaws you identified above.

As existing site have some issues that reduce their usability explained through Heuristics principles, it is essential to have some proper recommendations under its design that could help improve the site performance (Boyd et al., 2021). The recommendations which are going to apply must address the usability flaws and need to bring change in the existing design of the site. With the website’s poor design, lack of consistency was a significant issue under its usability. Hence using the same color to the entire page is recommended while designing that makes a website consistent. The spacing alignment between the elements arranged in horizontal and vertical must be consistent, improving usability. One more recommendation for changing the existing site was navigation with the exact location and text with the same color. This improves the website’s consistency, rectifying the usability issue (Hayat et al., 2021).

Focusing on incremental improvement is recommended while designing that helps in achieving the primary goal of this website use. Some more recommendations that could be done for improving the site and eliminating the usability flaw of consistency was of providing a clear visual hierarchy to the elements on the page (Boyd et al., 2021). Business Logo must be allowed to appear on each page that improves consistency. Another usability issue identified was recognition instead of a recall, which must be enhanced with the recommendations that help humans retrieve the information from memory. Interaction design must be done correctly that helps in minimizing the user’s memory load with several actions and visible options. Recognizing is always better and more accessible than recall, and this issue can be solved with the additional changes done through making objects. All the commands on the website page must be displayed properly to allow the users to have a clear vision of the system and recognize them easily (Hayat et al., 2021). This facilitates in reducing the usability issue. Avoiding the users to recall the critical information from one page to another is recommended that helps in minimizing the workload of users and have a better experience.

One more issue was on help, and documentation can be addressed by using additional formats and digital text images. This helps the user better understand the components (Boyd et al., 2021). Even a software program is recommended for this site while its design ensures explaining all the features that enable users to understand its capabilities better. The improvement of the performance of this site can be seen with some additional recommendations. All the content on the page must be freshened regularly, which helps address usability issues. The update is recommended for the existing design through its current standards that benefit in changing its usability status. Even the page speed must be improved, suggesting some extra changes under its usability. To explain all the components and features of the home page in detail, it is necessary to add some images and videos that have the self-explanation part for the users and reduce the issue over consistency (Hayat et al., 2021).

References

Boyd, K., Bond, R., Ryan, A., Goode, D., & Mulvenna, M. (2021). Digital reminiscence app co‐created by people living with dementia and carers: Usability and eye gaze analysis. Health Expectations, 24(4), 1207–1219. https://doi.org/10.1111/hex.13251

Fletcher, P., Poon, A., Pearce, B., & Comber, P. (2013). Practical Web Traffic Analysis: Standards, Privacy, Techniques, and Results. Berkeley, CA: Apress L.P.

Hayat, S., Rextin, A., & Bilal, A. (2021). Understanding the usability issues in contact management of illiterate and semi-literate users. PLoS ONE, 16(12), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259719

In Thampi, S. M., In Madria, S., In Wang, G., In Rawat, D. B., & In Alcaraz, C. J. M. (2019). Security in computing and communications: 6th International Symposium, SSCC 2018, Bangalore, India, September 19-22, 2018, Revised selected papers.

Jeffries, R., Miller, J. R., Wharton, C., and Uyeda, K. M. (1991). User interface evaluation in the real world: A comparison of four techniques. Proceedings ACM CHI'91 Conference (New Orleans, LA, April 28-May 2), 119-124.

Nielsen, J. (2011, September 11). How Long Do Users Stay on Web Pages? Nielsen

Norman Group. Retrieved February 4, 2022, from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-long-do-users-stay-on-web-pages/

Nielsen, J., and Molich, R. (1990). Heuristic evaluation of user interfaces, Proc. ACM CHI'90 Conf. (Seattle, WA, 1-5 April), 249-256.

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