This paper reviewed the most recent evaluation criteria methods which were used in different e-business services. Furthermore, it proposes general criteria for evaluating the quality of any website regardless of the type of service that it offers. The dimensions of the criteria are content quality, design quality, organization quality, and user-friendly quality. These dimensions together with their comprehensive indicators and check list can be used by web designers and developers to create quality websites to improve the electronic service and then the image of any organization on the Internet

The success of an e-commerce site is, in part, related to how easy it is to use. This research investigated whether advanced web metrics, calculated using Google Analytics software, could be used to evaluate the overall usability of e-commerce sites, and also to identify potential usability problem areas. Web metric data are easy to collect but analysis and interpretation are time-consuming. E-commerce site managers therefore need to be sure that employing web analytics can effectively improve the usability of their websites. The research suggested specific web metrics that are useful for quickly indicating general usability problem areas and specific pages in an e-commerce site that have usability problems. However, what they cannot do is provide in-depth detail about specific problems that might be present on a page.

The importance of evaluating the usability of e-commerce websites is well recognised. User testing and heuristic evaluation methods are commonly used to evaluate the usability of such sites, but just how effective are these for identifying specific problems? This article describes an evaluation of these methods by comparing the number, severity and type of usability problems identified by each one. The cost of employing these methods is also considered. The findings highlight the number and severity level of 44 specific usability problem areas which were uniquely identified by either user testing or heuristic evaluation methods, common problems that were identified by both methods, and problems that were missed by each method. The results show that user testing uniquely identified major problems related to four specific areas and minor problems related to one area. Conversely, the heuristic evaluation uniquely identified minor problems in eight specific areas and major problems in three areas.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop a methodological usability evaluation approach for e‐commerce websites in developing countries.Design/methodology/approach: A multi‐faceted usability evaluation of three Jordanian e‐commerce websites was used, where three usability methods (user testing, heuristic evaluation and web analytics) were applied to the sites.Findings: A four‐step approach was developed to facilitate the evaluation of e‐commerce sites, mindful of the advantages and disadvantages of the methods used in identifying specific usability problems.Research limitations/implications: The approach was developed and tested using Jordanian users, experts and e‐commerce sites. The study compared the ability of the methods to detect problems that were present, however, usability issues not present on any of the sites could not be considered when creating the approach.Practical implications: The approach helps e‐commerce retailers evaluate the usability of their websites and understand which usability method(s) best matches their need.Originality/value: This research proposes a new approach for evaluating the usability of e‐commerce sites. A novel aspect is the use of web analytics (Google Analytics software) as a component in the usability evaluation in conjunction with heuristics and user testing.

Generally, universities have complex and large websites, which include a collection of many sub-sites related to the different parts of universities (e.g. registration unit, faculties, departments). Managers of academic institutions and educational websites need to know types of usability problems that could be found on their websites. This would shed the light on possible weak aspects on their websites, which need to be improved, in order to reap the advantages of usable educational websites. There is a lack of research which provides detailed information regarding the types of specific usability problems that could be found on universities websites in general, and specifically in Jordan. This research employed the heuristic evaluation method to comprehensively evaluate the usability of three large public university websites in Jordan (Hashemite University, the University of Jordan, and Yarmouk University). The evaluation involves testing all pages related to the selected universities faculties and their corresponding departments. A list of 34 specific types of usability problems, which could be found on a Jordanian university website, was identified. The results provide a description regarding the common types of the problems found on the three Jordanian university sites, together with their numbers and locations on the website.