This book investigates whether usability aspects affect the design and
development of the browsing experience in e-commerce applications. The
book is limited to the generic e-commerce activities and does not
address the financial perspective. As background the book studies the
e-commerce domain, interaction design and systems development
methodologies. Within a quasi-experimental research design the study
then developed two experimental websites to test the hypotheses that
usability principles of consistency, structured information and
navigation affect the users of a website: one adhering and one violating
these principles. Respondents were required to record their perceptions
of both using a questionnaire. The study's found that usability issues
had a minimal influence on the perceived success of the websites. It is
thus only one of many factors that needs to be considered in the design
and development of a successful e-commerce website, and cannot be
treated as an isolated add-on. This book has been written in a non
technical fashion. Managers, computer systems developers, usability
engineers, electronic commerce companies and researchers will find this
book of interest.