Issues Facing Website Evaluation

Abstract

As business organisations have become more reliant on Information Technology in achieving success, Information Systems have become essential. Business organisations now use websites as part of their Information Systems as a medium for communication and transactions between the business and their customers. A better understanding of how to evaluate a website is necessary. This chapter explores website evaluation and recognises the current challenges facing website evaluation. It begins by identifying the type of website the current study is focussed on, namely the e-commerce website. This is followed by reviewing the literature on website evaluative approaches and anecdotally described issues with the existing performance measures. Three perspectives were identified when evaluating websites, user, designer, and owner perspectives. While the user and the designer perspectives are well advanced in the literature, there is a relative dearth of scholarly studies that address the owners’ needs. The provision of such a perspective may enhance an owner’s ability to increase returns and benefits from their online activity. Such gap need to be filled, a call from the authors.