The impact of users' interface on users trust in e commerce - Essay Example

(p. 920) For online transactions wherein customers buy products and conduct their financial activities, trust is everything. Ecommerce is deeply interwoven with risks for consumers that is why organizations have to work hard in order to earn it. One of the most important features in the design of ecommerce website that achieves for an organization the trust of its visitors is the user interface. (Lumsden, p. 867) This paper will explore and examine this area and, specifically, will outline the relationship between user interface and trust.

Consumers’ trust in an e-retailer, wrote Zhou (2006), can be defined as the consumers’ willingness to accept vulnerability in an online transaction based on their positive expectations in regard with and E-retailers future behavior. (p. 335) This is mainly achieved through a positive relationship that are sustained through time. The behavior of E-retailer towards its consumers can both do and undo this. Smith and Salvendy (2007) explained that trust is based upon perception, the process by which individual’s select, filter, organize and interpret information in order to create a meaningful picture of the world. (p. 68) What this highlights is that trust falls under the behavioral and psychological sphere, wherein individuals are affected by and react to symbols and signs that enable them to perceive dependability, credibility and competence.

In applying this in ecommerce, one could say that those people, who encounter symbols, read them through their own individual eyes and the symbols acquire meaning in the organization through recurring experiences. (Smith and Salvendy, p. 68) In user interface, integrating this behavioral and psychological consideration would be able to increase value for the website including its trust warranting properties. The trust requirements in ecommerce have produced several guidelines and standards in regard to user interface development and design.