Web Site Interface Design External and Internal Factors.pdfVIP

Web Site Interface Design: External and Internal Factors Ahmed Mahfouz Department of Information and Operations Management, Mays College and Graduate School of Business Administration, Texas AM University, College Station, TX 77843-4217 amahfouz@ Abstract. There has been tremendous growth in electronic commerce over the past few years. This growth is expected to sustain momentum in the future. Hence, the Internet has become an essential tool for business and customers. However, unlike traditional retailers, it lacks key aspects of a shopping experience like interacting with customer sales people and being physically in a store. A well-designed user interface can overcome some of these limitations and aid customers in their search of products and services. This paper examines both the internal (to the web design) and external (to the users environment) factors that affect user interface design on the World Wide Web. These five factors are the users mental model, level of expertise of the user, the users learning style, richness of the media used, and the organizational image and message. Since all factors are external with the exception of the richness of the media used, the emphasis in the paper is on external factors. 1. Introduction Electronic commerce has exploded on the Internet over the past few years and is expected to continue growing at a phenomenal rate (Kannan, Chang, and Whinston, 1998). According to the GVUs 8th WWW Use