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A rapidly growing segment of the internet is e‐commerce. The future of economic competitiveness for most enterprises relies on entrance and active participation in the e‐commerce market. About a third of the time users fail when they try to purchase products on an e‐commerce site. An essential problem with e‐commerce is that the controls and organization are different for each site. There is no standard way of building the navigation of the e‐commerce site. Most sites do not have a global navigation system and the local one may be confusing, like solving a maze. The goal of this study is to minimize users' look up time and make e‐commerce sites usable so visitors can easily and quickly access information. The objective of this study is to provide an implementation method by which an agent of the artificial intelligence (AI) user interface creates a standard navigation menu, called E‐menu, to increase the usability of e‐commerce.

The selected E‐menu items are based on a study of the graphical user interface (GUI) used in Windows environment and an evaluation of one hundred and two (102) e‐commerce sites. The prototype of the E‐menu system proves that a standard menu can be created by an intermediate intelligent agent, acting on behalf of the system user. Three sites out of 102 were chosen to be edited by the E‐menu server for the pilot study. This study also applies the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) identifying components of usefulness and ease of use that predict user attitude toward the usage of the E‐menu system by conducting a Web‐based survey.

The survey result is promising and indicates that the e‐commerce users accept the idea of the E‐menu system. The E‐menu system makes it possible to create a standard navigation menu globally for e‐commerce sites. Although E‐menu is not ready for prime time, the prototype proves that a standard menu can be created by an intermediate intelligent agent, acting on behalf of the system user. These types of agents will become more popular in the internet paradigm as the number of e‐commerce sites increase and the usability of the sites decrease due to rapid deployment strategies and technological deficiencies.

The paper provides information on a method to increase the usability of e‐commerce sites.

The internet provides a mechanism by which buyers and sellers meet in order to exchange goods and services online with the utmost convenience. However, there are many risks associated with the internet which, if left unattended, could continue deterring the adoption of e-commerce. These risks ultimately diminish online consumer trust in e-commerce. Web assurance models have been designed in an attempt to encourage online consumer trust through assurance. Unfortunately, many of these models have been inadequate in certain areas and this research aims to improve on them.

It presents a comprehensive empirical survey on trustworthiness issues and e-commerce assurance models and proposes a new compliance-based e-commerce assurance model that integrates adaptive legislation, adaptive e-commerce-related standards and cooperative rating. The intelligent cooperative rating is based on the analytic hierarchy process and page-ranking techniques.

Some findings of this research study influence the thinking that some of the untrustworthy sites are posing as trustworthy sites because they display web seals. The findings can be used as a reference guide to understand e-commerce assurance models, as well as the effectiveness of ensuring the trustworthiness of these models.

The research presents deployment analysis on the use of the proposed compliance model through real life scenarios categorized as trustworthy and untrustworthy e-commerce web sites.

This research is relevant to information management and computer security in e-commerce as a development of a newly proposed e-commerce assurance model for trustworthiness safety inspections and knowledge generation as a reference guide to understand e-commerce trustworthiness in general and e-commerce assurance models in particular detail.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and test an empirically grounded comprehensive framework of e-quality that is the composite of the relationship between e-satisfaction and e-loyalty. This study’s objectives were: first, to develop a comprehensive measurement scale of perceived quality from an operations perspective, based on the classic Engel-Kollat-Blackwell (EKB) decision-making process; second, to develop a framework that integrates dimensions of quality and measures perceptions of e-quality during the customer’s decision-making process; and third, to examine the predictive capability of quality attributes in relation to service operations that rely on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.

Following review of the related literature, focus group protocols were developed and interviews conducted. Based on the focus group input, surveys were developed and administered. Survey data from 717 online customers allowed testing the research hypotheses, and structural equation modeling allowed validation of the research framework.

The study determined that “e-channel quality”, “e-service quality” (including “web site quality” and “transaction quality”), and “product quality” positively influence customer e-satisfaction within an online operation. These constructs, in turn, influence customer e-loyalty in the e-commerce domain. The findings contribute valuable theoretical and managerial implications that can improve e-service operations.

The paper fills a relevant gap in the e-commerce and services operations literature by empirically developing and validating a new and robust quality measurement scale based on the EKB consumer decision-making process. The study also makes an important research contribution by providing empirical evidence that quality is pivotal in gaining customer loyalty and a competitive e-commerce edge.

The present research is an updated and expanded continuation of an article by Parayitam et al. from 2008. The purpose of this study is to examine several internet policies and whether the communication of these policies to the customer has significantly changed during a ten year period.

The study defines published policies of how a company operates with respect to different factors. The policies examined are privacy, security, shipping, returns, and warranty. Each of the policies described above were then rated as per the rating scale defined by the authors. The 525 e‐commerce sites studied were divided into service and product sites, respectively. The e‐commerce sites were also separated into 28 industry groups. The data were also collected on some of the other factors that were important in this study.

E‐commerce companies do not fully inform their customers. The results showed no significant relationships between the policy ratings and any of the other factors taken into account.

The net incomes collected were the companies' entire income, not exclusively from online sales. The present study used an unbalanced sample size consisting of more product sites than service sites.

People doing business over internet with e‐commerce companies need to read the privacy policy carefully and should be aware of how their information will be used by the e‐commerce companies.

The study provides valuable information about e‐commerce companies in communicating their customer service policies and very little changes have taken place in the last ten year period.

E‐services are important in B2C e‐commerce for managing customer relations and enhancing sales. In the electronic world the customer and the merchant do not meet face‐to‐face, and the clients are more discerning with increased options and solutions available to them online. With the click of a mouse a customer can find another provider. As customers embrace e‐commerce their expectations about service, support, and how they make purchases are changing. Services to customers offered electronically to enhance their online shopping experience include search support, e‐response to customer queries, orders and transactions, e‐payment, e‐transaction record management, e‐assurance and trust, e‐help and other online support in the B2C e‐space. This paper discusses the role of e‐services in B2C e‐commerce and how they can be applied to enhance the online customer shopping experience. Findings of two research projects that shed some light on both business and customer perspectives of the role of e‐services in the B2C e‐commerce are launched in this paper.

To identify what constitutes web site quality or what makes a web site effective.

This article examines and integrates four sets of factors that capture e‐commerce web site quality using an IS success model: system quality, information quality, service quality, and attractiveness. A questionnaire survey was conducted to verify the measures of web site quality. Based on TAM, a framework is also developed relating web site quality to customers' beliefs (perceived usefulness and ease of use), attitudes (preferences for the site), and intentions (to revisit the site).

A set of instruments of web site quality has been developed and empirically validated by factor analysis.

The research is based on a sample of students browsing several book web sites and they may not sense the web site quality across different B2C commercial web sites such as music, computer, travel, clothes and flowers. Data in these domains should be collected in any future research to examine further the measures developed here.

Guidelines for web interface design are proposed.

This paper fulfils the identification of web site quality and the development and validation of its measures and offers a framework and practical guidelines for e‐commerce managers and web designers.

Most e‐commerce web sites use HTML forms for user authentication, new user registration, newsletter subscription, and searching for products and services. The purpose of this paper is to present a method for automated classification of HTML forms, which is important for search engine applications, e.g. Yahoo Shopping and Google's Froogle, as they can be used to improve the quality of the index and accuracy of search results.

Describes a technique for classifying HTML forms based on their features. Develops algorithms for automatic feature generation of HTML forms and a neural network to classify them.

The authors tested their classifier on an e‐commerce data set and a randomly retrieved data set and achieved accuracy of 94.7 and 93.9 per cent respectively. Experimental results show that the classifier is effective and efficient on both test beds, suggesting that it is a promising general purpose method.

The paper is of value to those involved with information management and e‐commerce.

As a result of the dot‐com collapse and the slowdown in the economy, the flood of venture capital dollars for e‐commerce has evaporated. E‐commerce companies have been enforced to review their business performance. E‐commerce efficiency has been touted to be a critical component that can assist a company in its strategies to become successful. This study proposes a model for evaluating e‐commerce efficiency using data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach. The model includes not only financial and operational measures, but also e‐commerce specific measures. An illustrative example demonstrates that the DEA model can not only effectively reflect the relative efficiency of e‐commerce firms but also identify their potential efficiency problems. Management can, therefore, take the right remedial actions.

Much of the current understanding of the effectiveness of Web sites is anecdotal and contained in case studies. Building on a review of these case studies, this study has two objectives: to evaluate systematically the relevance of the antecedents for which anecdotal evidence is available, and to determine the relative importance of these to uncover factors that are crucial for successful Web sites. Measures performance of Web sites in terms of the number of visitors and the managerial satisfaction with the site. The results indicate that both performance indicators refer to different dimensions of Web site performance and that they are influenced by different antecedents. The results show that most antecedents identified in literature indeed somehow influence the performance of Web sites. Multivariate analyses indicate that customization of the Web site is an important determinant of both Web performance indicators. Evidence was also found that a too strong focus on short‐term financial benefits has a negative impact on Web site satisfaction. Extensive sites tend to attract more visitors, while building sites merely for learning related goals tend to decrease the number of visitors.