The Impact of Usability on the Intention of Planned Purchases in E-commerce Service Websites

For e-commerce websites to be successful in a highly competitive environment, the designers and managers should know what usability attributes can affect the probability of customers’ making purchases. This paper proposes a website usability study to measure attributes and the users’ intention of planned purchases. This study provides a designer’s perspective of the online customer which can be a significant step towards understanding customer online decision-making and their intention of planned purchases. The study is validated on two existing e-commerce service websites. Current HCI studies, psychological and Information Systems theories are used to identify key usability attributes that can influence customers’ purchasing intentions. Implications and limitations of the findings are discussed.