E-commerce: assessing quality of a website - Essay Example

E-COMMERCE: ASSESSING QUALITY OF A WEBSITE Introduction Life in this century has come to be driven by technology and the increased revolution in information technology has seen increased provision of information through the internet. There has been development of search engines which assists the users to access the information that they want from the internet. The website has become one of the most important tools for organization which helps them to give information to the users of the internet. Organizations are able to give most of the information regarding their organizations using the website. Therefore the way information it presented in the website becomes one of the most important aspect of communication between the organization and the users of the internet. The website has become has become one of the most essential tool of any organization as it makes a strong impact as far as the image of the organization is concerned. Currently there are more that 970 million users of the internet in the world as hence one of the most important functions that the website can be used by any organization is for marketing. Thus internet marketing and e-commerce has become of the most recent business strategy for many organizations. This has come with the increased rate of globalization where the world has become a global village. Therefore a business threat has been strategizing to go international or even spread its wings in the domestic market needs to have a website as one of the most important component of its operating. (Pegasus, 2008) The question that lingers in most of businesses is whether they have to spend millions of money building an attractive website and the answer is yes. Having an attractive website that can keep internets users browsing back to it is like having a record of the company in the yellow pages which is actually a past technology. This is because through an attractive website, customers are likely to come for more information where they are likely to learn more about the organization and about how it functions. In short a website is essential to have the business generate more money which is more worth than the amount that will be used in making the website. (Web updates, 2008) Therefore there are some quality bench marks that can be used to judge the usefulness of a website based on the way it provides information to the customers and on the way it makes them to come back for more information. This paper will asses the qualities of a good website and evaluates two websites in order to show how they have been developed and to judge whether they meet the qualities of a good website. But first let us evaluate the quality of a good website. Qualities of Hilton Hotel and Manchester United website The quality of a website is very important as far as its use by customers is concerned. This is because users are likely to visit website where there are likely to get the information that they want. As the rate of use of internet increases, so is the rate of competition on the internet. Therefore it has become imperative for organization to come up with quality websites that meets the requirement of the users. Two key components that are essential in determine the relevance and attractive of the user are design and functionality of the website which determines the attractiveness of the websites. (Myers 2006, p. 7) In the design of the website, the search engine should be easy for use by the user. This means the design must provide for an efficient way of accessing the information. It must not limit the amount of information that the user can access unless it is for security or commercial purposes. When we compare the two website, there are a number of issues that comes out as far as their design and functionality is concerned. The Manchester United website approach to have used modern technology as it has little information on the home page as compared to the Hilton hotel website. The Hilton hotel website has been designed to give all the information that the user may require to know about the hotel and its operation. Therefore it has taken into consideration the purpose of its creation. While the Manchester United website has been created for entertainment purpose, the Hilton website has been created for business purpose. Therefore the design of both website has taken into consideration the purpose for their creation. Similarities and differences between the two websites There are many models that have been developed that help in assess quality of products and service. However, all the models have some general principles that are used in assessing the quality of a product or a service. In its simple definition quality can be said to be the network value of a product or a service which can be measure in term of it superiority compared to others or by the extent of the product to satisfy the demands of the consumer. Quality of a product is evaluated on the way the product can serve the purpose for which it was extended to. In this paper we are going to assess the quality of the two mentioned organizations in regard to the qualities of a good website and also the quality of good information on the websites. (CAESL 2008, p. 34) There are various kinds of websites depending on the reason why they were designed. Therefore in assessing the quality of website it is important to consider the kind of a website in order to understand how the website fulfils its mandate. Static website is generally text base and they are used more as search engines which are friendly to the user. Flash websites are created fore entertain, game, animation or visual effects. There are usually useful in representing a product or a service in a more innovative way. Dynamic websites are created for various applications and are designed in a way that from login page, employee can login and update the data directly. They are mostly used for projects or for business to up to, price, stock status, message, news, service and other types of products and service. Hybrid website are a mixture of static and flash sites and are useful when making a search engaging friendly to the user and which contain visual and flash animations. (Vassilis 2006, p. 3) As regard our two organizations we can classify them in different categories. Manchester United website has been created mainly for entertainment and therefore it can be classified as a Flash website. But at the same time it contains a lot of information about the organization that is interwoven with picture and games animation and hence it again takes the nature of a hybrid websites. On the other hand, Hilton Hotel website has been created for business purpose and at the same time it provides a lot of information on the organization and its operation. But it can be classified as a dynamic website since the information contained in the site can change from time to time since it provides business nature information. Therefore all the principle of quality assessment must be in agreement that a quality product or service must be able to satisfy the needs of the user which means that it must be able to meet in intended purpose. It has to serve the purpose that it is intended to serve. Therefore when assessing the quality of a product, we tend to look at the way that it has been created and the way that it can motivate the user to select the product in future in preference to other substitutes. (Bird 2005, p.8) This same principle applies when we are assessing the quality of a good website. This means that a good website must be able to meet the demands to the users in the sense that it must serve the purpose for which it was designed. It must be able to pass all the required information to the user. What is some important principle to consider when assessing the quality of information in a website A good website must be able to give the source of the information. This means that it must be able to highlight the source of the information that is presented in the website. This is in order to give the users a degree of confidence on the validity of the information that they re accessing. In this regard it must also be able to give the date when the information was posted. This helps the user to know the validity of the information and its relevance since they may be looking for newer information white the information that is contained in the website is actually outdated. If the information has been revised often, then the date of revision must be indicated so that the users can understand the changes that have been made in the website in case they had accessed the information earlier. In both website, they provide high quality information that is well updated. But the information of the Hilton hotel was last updated in 2007 while that in the Manchester United website appear more current. But again this is dependant on the purpose of the website. A good website like other source of information must be able to provide for an accurate data whose parameters are well defined. In this regard the information that is found in the website must be accurate as compared to other sources of information. This should be implemented in the since that the internet my soon be the leading source of information and hence the accuracy of the information has a lot of implication on the way people synthesizes the information. Since the source of information from two website is from the organizations themselves, the validity of the information is not doubtable. The accuracy of the information cannot also be doubted since it is updated. The quality of the information on a website must not be biased and hence there should be effort to keep biasness to the minimum. In this regard, the information should be impartial and a fair especially where it arranges personal opinion. This will help to attract the users as people are like to keep off from website that hurt their emotions or from the websites that they find are contrary to their believes. In case the website contains personal view, they should be straight to the point as much as possible. (UCLA Young Research Library, 2008) In order to give the users a wide range of reference to show the velocity of the information in the website, there should be links created to link the website to other quality sources of the same information. This will help the users to access more information. However all the website in our case studies does not provide for their links to the same kind of information. This can be understood on the sense that they both have been adapted for business purpose and you don't inform your customers of your competitors. If the websites are commercial website there should be reform to keep advertisement separate from the content of the website. In this regard, most of the commercial websites are created with an aim of market and hence advertisements are the main content of this website. But advertisements are not enough to keep the internet users visiting the website again. Therefore there is need to integrate other information with these website in order to keep the users visiting them. In real practice, some organization has found out that when advertisement is placed side by side with important information, there is usually high turnout of internet users on these sites and the more the probability of seeing the advertisement. There is a similarity between the two website on the issue of putting advertisement together with the information. The Manchester united website only contains their own information and has integrated its business advertisement of sport kits and at the same time gives information of game results. On the other hand the Hilton website gives information about the organization and its operation and at the same time advertises tourist destinations. Therefore both website have carried information hand in hand with advertisement. The most important aspect of any website comes in the way it is organization and the easiness of use. This is more important because besides the content of the website, it also determines the attractiveness of the site to the users. In this regard, designing of a website should take into consideration the process that the user will follow before getting the information that they want. Fro example, there are some website where the users are required to register before they can access the information that they want while other are open to all user. There is a high probability that users are likely to access the websites where there are no bureaucratic procedures for them to access the information that they need. (Litos 2006, p. 72) The accessibility of both website is comparatively easy. But the Manchester united website is easy as compared to Hilton website. This is because it has been designed with icons the directly leads you to what you want to know about the organization. On the other hand Hilton Website contains information on reservation and at the same time gives information about the organization. Hence we have seen that the most important aspect of the information in webs should the accuracy, currency, validity, authority, objectivity, and coverage of the information. These factors should be considered when designing information to be posted in a web. However the information in web may meet all these quality but not meet the expectation due to the way it is represented in a web. Therefore let us look at criteria for evaluation quality of a website. Judging a website is quite subjective since website is created for different reasons. A site may be created for art, education, entertainment, commercial, or it can be just for personal information purpose. Therefore when the quality of website we must look at the context of its purpose although there are few rules that a standard website must meet. The World Wide Web Consortium has been working toward developing rules that any website must meet in order to promote universal access, responsible use, and to make them more user friendly. Let us look at five produce that are very crucial in determining the quality of a website. (University of Washington, 2008) Accessibility A website should be universally accessible to all users. This means that it has to be able to open quickly and has possibly of being viewed using different browsers, operation systems and monitor solutions. It has to be accessibly to disabled and people with low level of education and cultural backgrounds. (Butler 2007, p. 49) Both website have kept to this requirement and they are accessible to all users in the intent. However, the Manchester united website may not be accessibly to all browser and systems, as it has been design with iconned pictures which may require more capacity to open them. Hence in terms of accessibly, we can say that the Hilton Hotel website is more accessible that Manchester United website. Design The design is very important element to consider when assessing the quality of a website. A good website should have b design that is appealing, readable, and easy to navigate and gives the purpose of the website which means it gives a unified look and feel. (Zhang 2000, p. 3) In terms of design, both website have been designed in a more accessible manner. They appear easy to use but on comparison, the Manchester united website is well designed compared to that to Hilton Hotel and hence it is easy to access the information that one needs. On the other hand the Hilton website contains more information on the same window which may be confusing to the user. Content We all visit a website due to its content. We have already seen the qualities of good web content. This means that the content on the web most be accurate, authoritative, objective, current, and have a wider coverage. The amount of information that a user cans access from a website is very important. As we have evaluated the content of both the website is convening as they contain all the information that the use may need to know about. The content has also fulfilled the entire above requirement. Technological aspect and interactivity A good website can be judge by hoe the technology used add to or detract from the purpose of website. A good website must use new technologies and multimedia nature in order to allow users interactivity and make the experience different from accessing the same information from other sources like TV, Radio, Magazine, Books, and others. Good websites make use of various new technologies including bulletin board's survey, video, game, online test, audio select, chat rooms, broadcasting, and others which makes them more interactive. (Horton 2005, p. 59) There is a big difference between the two websites when it comes to the issue of use of technology. There is extensive use of current technology to enhance interactivity in the Manchester united website as compared to Hilton hotel website. The level of integrity in the Hilton website is precisely limited to booking and the operations of the hotel while the Manchester United site has interaction for business and for personal views. Therefore the Manchester united site is likely to attract more users as they feel a part of the websites in the scene that they can give their views. Creativeness and originality Creatively and originality can be more fun to the website as they enhance novelty and ingenuity. It should be distinguished from others. It should provide a memorable experience for users. There is a lot of creativity and innovation when it comes to the Manchester unlevelled website. This is because it appears exceptional from all other website in the sense that it is has a different design. It is more attractive compared to the Hilton Hotel websites. Its design is different from other website and picture has been used creatively to attract any internet user. Although there is a limited use of pictures on the Hilton Hotel website, there is a lot of information that has been put on the home page that is confusing the user. 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