Usability and billing: how is the relationship in e-commerce?

Abstract

In order to analyze the relationship between usability and billing in the Spanish e-food sector, a heuristic evaluation of the ten billing leaders e-commerce websites in Spain (Mercadona, El Corte Inglés, Carrefour, Día, Alcampo, Eroski, Caprabo, Ulabox, Tu Despensa and HiperDirect). The definition and operationalization of the research variables is done according to the Web Usability Model proposed by Fernández (2009) based on the ISO/IEC 25000 (SQuaRE, Software, Quality Requirement Evaluation) usability standard because it decomposes the generic and abstract subcharacteristics defined by SQuaRE in attributes of the web domain and includes web metrics that allow us to detect usability problems and quantify the attributes, which guarantees a greater objectivity, fundamental criterion in the qualitative investigations. The benchmarking resulting from applying this technique allows us to know the best usability practices and apply them to the analyzed sector. This allows us to reduce the gap between academic research and business practice, because it helps companies to know what characteristics of each of the usability dimensions must improve and, therefore, where they have to invest their resources to improve the quality of the experience of its customers. In addition, it allows companies to know which variables should improve and in which competitors can be set in each case. In addition, it allows companies to know which variables should improve and in which competitors can be set in each case.