An Expert System for Usability Evaluations of Business-to-Consumer E-Commerce Sites

Many e-commerce sites experience usability problems. If usability of those sites is improved, their sales may increase significantly. This can be achieved by conducting adequate usability evaluations. However, traditional usability testing is an expensive activity because it involves participation of usability experts and engineers. Therefore, not many companies are able to afford it or willing to invest in it. The situation worsens by the fact that web designers and developers are not very familiar with usability principles and usability testing techniques. Therefore, development of an expert system for usability evaluations is proposed. The system will identify usability flaws and provide design recommendations on how to eliminate the detected design flaws. The proposed system will allow e-commerce firms to conduct effective usability evaluations with minimal or no usability skills at a relatively low cost. This study is still in progress and final results are not available yet.