Role of Web Usability in Online Customer Experience: A Case of Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia is an emerging online target market and many business organizations are focusing on this potential market to increase their revenues. Business organizations need to develop online value propositioning to attract different customer segments. Usability of e-business portals is an important factor for online customer retention. In this research, we have conducted the usability evaluation of some selected websites engaged in Saudi marketplace to understand their user interface quality. The quantitative data was collected during an experiment session with users where two subject groups evaluated two sets of websites and later provided their feedback in a questionnaire. The analysis of results highlights that there is a need to further improve navigation, design and content related factors to foster better usage. Internal navigation within a page, the presence of orphan pages and nonfunctioning of some links were the main problems identified pertaining to navigation category. In case of design related issues, inconsistency in language interfaces, website layout, labeling of icons and menus formatting were the main problems. Missing contact information, last update date, lack of page rationality, alphabetical arrangement of content were the main content related issues which were reported in our study. Our study provides the basis for future research for improving website design and researchers could develop a set of guidelines for appropriate user interface design of e-business portals.