The Discussion on Influence of Website Usability ... - ResearchGate

growth rate is only 0.3%. Institute for Information Industry’s
FIND (2007) also explains that innovating continuously is still
one of the important methods for the enterprise to maintain the
competitive advantage when facing fast market change, and
“the customer’s suggestion”is the most important idea or
information resource when the service subscribers are in the
process of innovating products or services[4]. As a result, how
to offer consumers with more value-added and higher quality
services one of the important learning topics under the social
change that consumers’demands are increasing day by day.
B. Website Usability
<strong>The</strong> pioneer of website usability Jakob Nielsen and his
research partner Donald A. Norman have already proposed the
concept of website usability in 1998[5]. Nielsen [6]also
defines website usability as the application of human-machine
interface’s usability concept onto websites, so as to serve as
the quality standards and targets of measuring the website’s
human-machine interface. Krug [7]also defines website
usability as the degree of comfort of guests using the website.
Website usability not only established every on-site work
firmly, but also understands how to allow the guest to use the
website quickly and easily. Cowen [8] uses eye tracking to
assess the question of website usability. Brandon Cornett [9]
also points out that website usability and website marketing
are closely related and cannot be separated. Before someone
can respond something to your website, he/she should be able
to use your website first. Brinck et al. [10] also points out that
a website that allow the users to finish their desired target
quickly, efficiently and simply, then it is an usable website; he
also defines the design principles of a good website, which is
the website tally with simplicity, consistence and having focus.
After the above relevant literature review, one can know
that many scholars and experts have already used different
factors and dimensions to focus on website usability for
analysis and evaluation, among which a lot of studies use the
same or relevant website usability factors to undertake the test
and verification on relevant studies. This study also consults
their relevant factors and dimensions, in order to categorize
some website usability factors so as to undertake the
assumptions and analysis for the study.
C. <strong>The</strong> development of technology acceptance model
Venkatesh et al. [11] proposes Unified <strong>The</strong>ory of
Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). <strong>The</strong>
development of UTAUT is based on the studies in 20 years
and eight different acceptance models. Among them, these
eight different acceptance models are theory of rational
behavior, theory of planned behavior, technology acceptance
model, innovation diffusion theory (IDT), social cognitive
theory (SCT), motivational model (MM), combination of
technology acceptance model and theory of planned behavior
(C-TAM-TPB) and model of PC utilization (MPCU)
respectively. UTAUT mainly discusses the degree of
acceptance that individual user has towards information
technology. Its target lies in verifying and explaining the user
intends to use information system and his use behavior
afterwards, which includes four crucial factors, performance
expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating
conditions. Gender, age, experience and use intention are
assumed as the external variables that would strike against the
four crucial factors. Performance expectancy means the
individual believes that after using that system, it would be
helpful for him or her to obtain better performance at work.
Effort expectancy refers to the degree of accessibility of using
the system. Social influence refers to the degree that the
individual is influenced by other important people and then
uses the new system. Facilitating conditions refer to the
degree that the individual believes the existence of
infrastructure of the organization and technology can support
the use of system. Up to now, a lot of relevant studies have
already used UTAUT to undertake the analysis and
measurement of the use of information technology, and the
relevant evidence-based results generally obtain support
[11][12].
From the documents that are used in this study, one can
know that the use of UTAUT has become more extensive in
recent years, it is no longer confined to the discussion about
the use of information system, such as computer system, email,
online tax report, wireless Internet and online games, but
it has not been used in the study and verification about
usability or website usability yet at present. In view of this,
this study will utilize UTAUT to discuss the influence that
website usability has towards users.
III. STUDY MODEL AND METHOD
After the discussion of relevant literature review, this
study also consults UTAUT and generalizes the factors of
relevant website usability into four control variables
(Performance Expectancy (PE), Effort Expectancy (EE),
Social Influence (SI), and Facilitating Conditions (FC)) so as
to undertake the study analysis. In addition, besides the four
existing external variables (Gender, Age, Experience and
Voluntariness of Use), the fifth external variables (Position) is
added attempting to understand whether there is a difference
on Use Behavior in different Position classifications. This
study model is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1 –Study model
IV. THE STUDY RESULT