CRITERIA AFFECTING OF USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN OF E-COMMERCE IN SUDAN

Abstract

Recent advances in information and communication technology have contributed to maximizing the role of e-commerce, becoming an independent science in world’s trade and economy sciences. However, the current e-commerce initiatives in Sudan still face challenges and shortcomings that prevent the adoption of these initiatives by the citizens. Hence, there is a need to evaluate e-commerce sites, identify the user needs and requirements, and measure its experience. User experience is measured by functional specifications, security, content, information architecture, navigation, interaction factors, interface design, and qualities of aesthetics. The main objective of this research is to investigate retail e-commerce sites to discover criteria and factors affecting the user experience design UXD of these sites in Sudan as a case study. A questionnaire was designed to collect data from e-commerce users that are related to information technology field in government institutions, universities, and banks that fund e-commerce projects. The data was analyzed using SPSS. The study found that e-commerce sites have negative aspects such as having nonguessable and non-meaningful domain names and non-efficient navigation. Besides the lack of aesthetics, functional specifications, and interaction characteristics. The research findings contributed to the definition of critical factors towards designing a better user experience, and highlighting the problems which serve as a guide to the development and re-engineering of e-commerce sites.