A global perspective on web site usability - IEEE Software

0 7 4 0 7 4 5 9 / 0 0 / $ 1 0 . 0 0 © 2 0 0 1 I E E E the demise of e-commerce sites when sites are too late, too buggy, or too complex for ease of use. Many Internet analysts correctly predicted that a significant number of business-to-consumer sites would fail during the year 2000 due to a lack of customer retention and repeat sales. Webmergers estimated that 150 dot-coms failed during 2000 and more will follow this year.3 Those sites that continue to succeed have and will expend significant resources modifying their sites to improve customer retention. Many of the dot-com statistics do not take into account the global aspect of online marketing. The potential for financial gain in a global market is great, yet little is known about global ventures’ success rates in terms of meeting customer needs on a local level. On a global scale, we could argue that cultural diversity and sensitivity must be considered to ensure that the online shopping experience is the same for each customer regardless of locality. The fierce online competition that has led to the demise of poorly designed online sites nationally may occur globally if nothing is done to address global usability. What can be done strategically to reach out to a global market? We propose the use of a Web-based usability assessment model that promotes customer satisfaction as an focus