The Self-Confrontation Interview: Towards an Enhanced Understanding of Human Factors in Web-Based Interaction

This paper studies the effects on a user while they are on the Internet doing normal activities such as purchasing products through self-confrontation interview.
The self-confrontation interview comprises the following steps

• Asking subjects to perform the behavior being analyzed;
• Making a video-recording of the subjects’ actions;
• Asking the subjects to view the video recordings of their own actions;
• Pausing the video recordings at certain junctures and asking the subjects to recount any thoughts and emotions they had when they performed those actions;
• Transcribing the interviews and correlating the actors’ thoughts and emotions with their respective actions

Paper Here

Dimensional Hierarchy of Retail Website Quality

This paper studies the most important factors in an users experience of website quality and how a hierarchy of elements of quality can be developed. It uses Loiacono's WebQual scale to examine the dimensional hierarchy of the quality of apparel websites.
Customers satisfaction is very important while using a website or they will not return. Researchers from several disciplines have developed and tested instruments to measure website quality.  In this paper the authors propose their own model of hierarchy regards website quality and compare it with other models.  They propose a model of 6 factors that effect website quality from a users perspective.  These are

1. Information
2. Ease of Use
3. Entertainment
4. Trust
5. Transaction
6. Consistent Image

Paper can be found here Link.

A Comparison of Questionaires Thomas S. Tullis & Jacqueline N. Stetson UPA 2004 funded by Fidelity Investments Variety of questions have been reported in the literature for assessing percieved usability. Worrys about effectiveness of these questions was the reason for this study. Quesionaires used were: 1. System Usability Scale(SUS) 2. Questionaire for User Interface Satisfaction 3. Computer System Usability Questionaire 4. Words 5. Fidelity Investments own questionaire The study was carried out online on fidelity investments intranet 123 participants. Two sites used were: 1. finance.yahoo.com 2. kiplinger.com The users were asked to carry out to tasks. 1. Find the highest price in the past year for a share. 2. Find mutual fund with the highest 3 year return. Overall score was generated by converting each questionaires score to a percentage. All 5 showed site 1 to score higher. Although the accuracy of the results would have been better with a larger dataset. Also only two sites and two tasks gave limited results. It is also easier to compare to sites to each other than it is to evaluate a stand alone website. I found this paper a little limited in the the depth it went into the subject.

Measuring Percieved Website Usability 2007 Jianfeng Wang & Sylvain Semeca Journal of Commerce 2007 This paper tried to develope a short reliable and valid percieved website usability measurement scale(parimonious scals usable across all websites). There is an argument to be made that users experience a website before they commit to use it. Usability defined as how well and how a user, without training can interact with an information system of a website. A website must be compatible with characteristics of human action and perception, but also with users cognitive skills in communication, understanding, memory, and problem solving. In the usability metrics section of the paper it states there are five distinct approaches of usability testing: 1 Testing, 2 Inspection 3 inquiry, 4 Analytical modelling, 5 simulation. All dependent on subjective assessments in the form of user judgement. There are three dimensions of usability: 1. Ease of use 2. Navigation speed 3.Interactivity This paper also states the the fact a positive correlation exists between the usability construct and attitude towards the website. The method used involved 350 students asked to go to transactional website and perform set tasks. It tried to focus one dimension at a time. Future directions suggests looking at testing the scale in relation to different contexts such as informational websites destined for professional buyers. This scale is good in identifying which of the dimensions of a website need tob improved. The limitations of the study are that it was used only one website and mightent have great generalizability. Also cannot be certain users experienced all functionality of the website. future directin of research suggested by this paper could be look at subjective versus objective approaches of usablity evaluation.

The impact of external reference price on consumer price expectations Praveen K. Kopalle, Joan Lindsey-Mullikin This paper is relevant to the low initial quote(on an external reference) followed by a higher quote once the consumer visited the actual source.

The Moderating Effect of Transaction Experience on the Decision Calculus in On-Line Repurchase This paper looks more at user returning to website after an itial purchase and the factors related to that.

Some Papers

The effect of web interface features on consumer online purchase intentions sciencedirect article.