Functionality describes the various functions, features and services available on a website (Huizing, 2000). These elements are of great importance, because they can influence the perceived usefulness of a website by helping users during their visit. The Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1989) shows that such a higher perceived usefulness has a positive impact on the actual usage of the website which will obviously impact conversion rates (Hong and Tam, 2006). Creemers (1998) and various others (e..g. Bakker et al., 2001; Ives and Learrmonth, 1984) also confirm that functionality has a high strategic impact, because it influences user satisfaction and perceived service quality (Cenfetelli & Benbasat, 2002). It is therefore very important that the functionality provided on a website is sufficient to guide users towards conversion.
Using an expert review, the website content influencing functionality can be analyzed and compared to other websites. Such a content analysis has been used in various marketing and advertising research to analyze a variety of (written) documents (Liao et al., 2006). The choice of websites that are compared is of great importance when doing such an expert review, because the products offered can have different characteristics. For example, hardware requires a different approach than movies, because of its missing physical nature within web shops. But, when the proper websites and analysis tool are chosen, a content analysis is one of the best ways to identify missing functionality. In this article I will introduce an example case in which the functionality of a website has been analyzed using the ScanYours Webscan.
Website analysis & recommendations
Recently, I worked on a project where I did a functionality scan for SURFspot. SURFspot differs from most online stores, because they serve a niche market and can offer special prices to their consumers. For analyzing the functionality of the website these differences can however be neglected as SURFspot does fall under the category of transaction websites. It is therefore possible to compare SURFspot to other transaction website that offer similar services. Using the functionality block of the ScanYours Webscan, a large variety of elements influencing functionally could be examined and compared to similar websites in the Netherlands. The ScanYours Webscan is a website analyzing tool that can be used to investigate various aspects of a website. The elements of scantool were originally based on the Landscape Model by Verhagen (1999) that describes the online pretransaction process using a checklist with 155 items. The newest version however has been modified to reflect the five elements of the Customer Decision Support System by O’keefe and McEachem (1998) and contains a total of 260 measuring points in the functionality block. This block covers twelve functionality factors and results in a score (a percentage) for every factor that can be compared to scores from other website in the sector. For the comparison, an analysis was performed for SURFspot, Bol.com and Azerty. The latter two were voted best web shop on the ICT website Tweakers.net in 2011 with respectively 16.8 and 11.4 percent of the votes and thus serve as role models for transaction websites.
The spider graph (figure 1) below shows the results for the twelve factors of the functionality block for the three analyzed websites. Using this type of graph, it is easy to identify the weaknesses of the various websites as websites lacking important functionality will cover a smaller area in the graph. Although SURFspot scores high on the factor ‘content’, it is clear that SURFspot lacks functionality when looking at the other eleven factors. Thorough analyses of the various questions asked within all factors revealed that the website does not support decision making as essential elements are missing. In the following subsections the most important elements will be discussed and various suggestions are made to improve functionality.
Figure 1) Functionality analysis for SURFspot, Bol.com & Azerty (higher values are better)
Decision making
The most important elements related to the actual decision making process score very low in the benchmark. With lacking (customer) reviews and no community, SURFspot scores lowest on this factor and improvement is needed to be comparable with other web shops. Peer reviews by other users is probably one of the most important functionalities that is lacking on the current website. These reviews are considered far more important by visitors than the actual product description and marketing text written by the owner (Chevalier et al., 2006). More elaborate information on several products will also improve the decision making process as almost all products offered are utilitarian products. In contrast with hedonic products, these products are not greatly dependent on personal taste, but are reviewed on utility (Verhagen et al., 2010). Pictures from several perspectives for hardware products (product information), links to trial software (product experience) and the option to compare several products in one category (advice) all provide users with better information to make substantiated decisions on what products might best fit the task they will be used for.
Personalization & Promotion
SURFspot uses account information from several organizations including large universities and hospitals. Currently, the link between SURFspot and these organizations is only visible at the login screen as SURFspot users third party authentication methods to provide access to their website. Although the link between SURFspot and these authentication servers is tightly integrated for flawless authentication, it seems that less effort was put into integrating other features like password retrieval (which requires two new windows to open) and personalization. It is obvious that the third parties have elaborate information on the users that visit SURFspot and this information can be used to personalize the website if integration between the parties would be improved. Technical differences between the various third parties would make this a somewhat daunting task, but with newer programming trends like modular programming and adapters, tight integration is no longer impossible. Once integration is complete, a large variety of new functionality should be implemented. For example, a student that logs in should be advised to visit software categories or products that match the chosen study, while irrelevant software packages should be less emphasized. If available, additional information from the third parties can be used to fill out forms and place orders on the website with less effort which improve the overall user experience.
Figure 2) A Mockup showing an improved version of a customized error page
Another form of personalization can be created by customizing the various error pages of the website. In the availability section these custom error pages were already discussed as they are now often missing. When implementing customized error pages it is nowadays possible to guide visitors on the website using the information provided by them. For example, the location ‘microsoft-office.html’ does currently not exist on the SURFspot website and will result in an error page (also referred to as a 404-page). By analyzing the link, the page should suggest pages to the user that are relevant to the incorrect link. A mockup shows how such an error page might look like (figure 2).
Although SURFspot currently promotes its products through FaceBook and the news items on the website, an RDF Site Summary (RSS) feed is lacking. RSS feeds, often dubbed Really Simple Syndication, are simple feeds that give an index in XML of a part of a website. Often, these RSS feeds only contain a title, link and a short description of the article the link refers to. Lots of programs can load and parse RSS feeds as it uses the XML standards. So-called RSS feed readers can use RSS feeds to keep their readers up-to-date on headlines and other news and standard libraries allow web developers to show styled RSS feeds on their website. It is advisable to create a RSS feed for the current news items and product updates to enable the simple updating of news on SURFspot websites and its partners. As most RSS users will expect to get additional information on products when go to the website from their RSS reader, the articles in the news section of the website should be made public.
Trust
Other categories are influenced by the lack of functionality that stimulates trust. For example, SURFspot scores relatively low in the category promotion, because it does not promote any web shop awards and/or other ratings. In the Netherlands, there are several publicly known ratings that can be placed on a website (after approval). Probably the most important one is ThuisWinkel, an organization that advices and analyzes hundreds of web shops including Bol.com. Visitors can use such ratings to identify trusted web shops and the related organization can often help web shops to improve their website. Such ratings can be placed in a separate box on every page stimulating trust. A mockup of such a box had been added (figure 3 & 4) as a reference.
Figure 3) Mockup showing improved functionality for SURFspot
Additionally, better and consistent contact options would allow users with questions about products, the organizations and related matters to contact SURFspot more easily (figure 3). This creates the opportunity to build up trust with the consumer using personal interaction. From the in-depth analysis, it became clear that there is currently little background information on the website. To prevent a flood of messages being send from the website, more information should also be provided on the organization. The addition of a history of the organization, the workforce (pictures have the ability to stimulate trust according to research by Corritore et al., 2003) and a page with information on reliable partners might answer questions that are currently left unanswered.
Figure 4) Mockup showing improved functionality for SURFspot
Task Support
Finally, SURFspot scores low on task support, but the graph shows that it is not lacking behind compared to Bol.com. However, since SURFspot serves a niche in the market that includes a large variety of students, it must be noted that certain functionality supporting various tasks should be present. For example, some universities support studying by visually impaired or color blind students by giving them additional time on exams and providing them with specialized tools or customized handouts. These students are potential prospects of SURFspot and the website should therefore support them during their visit. The analysis using the ScanYours Webscan revealed that the website currently lacks the functionality for this. To support a broader group of visitors the website should provide options to enlarge its content or higher the contrast of the template. Additionally, SURFspot could look into the option to have important texts on the website voice recorded (either manually or by using sophisticated software) providing support for visually impaired users (a good example of this functionality is provided on Wikipedia).
The above text was subtracted from a more elaborate report on the website of SURFspot. If you want more information on the ScanYours Webscan, the landscape model or our work, you can visit our main website.
