Human Computer Interaction Website Evaluation Report

This report provides an evaluation of two e-commerce websites, JB Hi-Fi and Amazon, focusing on Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and usability principles. The report begins with an executive summary, followed by an introduction outlining the evaluation's purpose and methodology, which includes analysis based on a web design book and HCI principles. The discussion section offers an overview and description of both websites, detailing their features and first impressions. A comparison is then made, assessing the websites based on HCI and usability principles like learnability and flexibility. Recommendations are provided for improving the websites' efficiency, focusing on product ranges, layout, navigation, and information presentation. The report concludes with a summary of the findings and references used.

Running head: HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION
Human computer interaction
Name of the student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Executive summary
The following report discusses about the evaluation of two websites that are provided in the
given document. The first company is JB Hi-Fi and the other one is Amazon. The evaluation
method used here is refereed from a book that is also provided in the report. Other methods of
evaluation like the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and the usability principle is used to
do the evaluation. This report also discusses about some recommendations regarding their
website.

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Table of Contents
Introduction:................................................................................................................................3
Discussion:..................................................................................................................................3
Overview and description:......................................................................................................3
Features of the websites:.........................................................................................................3
Comparison:............................................................................................................................4
Recommendation:...................................................................................................................4
Conclusion:.................................................................................................................................5
References:..................................................................................................................................6

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Introduction:
This report discusses about the evaluation of two websites that are given in the
requirements. The report is intended to provide a full evaluation regarding its features,
layouts, first impression created and ease of access. The evaluation of these websites is based
on the book on web design by Powell. Evaluation is also done with respect to the human
computer interaction (HCI) principles and the usability principles. This report also includes
the recommendations that are to be applied for designing.
Discussion:
The evaluation of a website is defined as an orderly process of knowing the worth and
competency of the website following a criteria that is sought from a set of standards. It helps
in assisting a company, organization or an entrepreneur to get the requirements and analysis of
their website and thus help in making effective design for future purposes. The main purpose
of evaluating a website is to get the necessary information on existing or new website designs
and get the required output to be utilized. The evaluation of a website involves the analysis of
objectives, which was predicted, and the objectives that has resulted due to the outcome.
Overview and description:
Website 1 given in the provided document is about an e-commerce store named JB Hi-
Fi. The company is supposed to be the largest home entertainment providers in Australia
(Jbhifi.com.au, 2017). The lists of devices that are included in the website are of top brands
and present in huge range. LED, LCD, Computers, Laptops, Tablets and many more devices
contributing to the home entertainment niche is present in the website. The head office of the
company is present in Chadstone Shopping Centre, Melbourne (D’Amato 2015). The
company was first involved in dealing with gramophone records but due to declination of
stocks in the market, the entire stock collection was refreshed and the company was involved
in dealing with retailing of music CDs.
Website 2 is also about an e-commerce store named Amazon. This company also
specializes in cloud computing which is based in Washington, Seattle. The company is the
largest retailer based in internet market specialization, which first started as an online
bookstore and later diversified into e-commerce store (Amazon.com, 2017). Amazon has
different retail websites for different countries it is working in like United Kingdom, France,
Ireland, Canada, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, Netherlands, Brazil, China, Japan, India
and Mexico. By 2008, the domain of Amazon attracted 615 million visitors annually.
Amazon also attracts 130 million users to the website intended for US citizens (Ritala,
Golnam and Wegmann 2014). To accomplish this load successfully, the company has made
heavy investments for the need of proper server capacity.
Features of the websites:
Website 1 is a neatly made website. The features of the website are neatly shown in
the website. One look at the website will tell the users that the main business of the website is
to deal with home entertainment products (Birt et al. 2012). The first impression depicted by
the website is that the website is too heavily congested with deals and products. The website is
also loaded with featured advertisement, which can be clearly seen in the sides. However, the
website is very neatly presented with flashy designs that are intended to capture the focus of
the users. The navigation feature of the website is a little bit intense. When the website is
navigated from one page to another, the retail portion in black does not change, however the
premium advertisements takes a little more time to load. The retail portion offers neat drop

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down feature in case of navigation. The identity pretest of website 1 shows that JB Hi-Fi is
eager about doing business without the need of hiding their identities. The homepage of the
website clearly gives a business description of their involvement and a link to contact them.
However, the postal address is not given in the home page bu provided in “contact us” page.
For the conduction of navigation pretest of the website, the home page is full of clickable
links where each links navigate to a product listed in the company.
Website 2 is also a neatly made website but the layout used here is a little different.
The first impression perceived from looking at the website is that the company deals with all
sorts of merchandises like dress, home appliances and others (Kantor and Streitfeld 2015).
The website also offers other valuable services like Prime feature. However, when doing the
identity pretest of the website, the postal address of the site is not listed in the home page. The
home page also does not show about the company description. There is a contact page listed at
the end, which on clicking also does not show the information about the company. Due to
such high public status of Amazon, the description is overlooked on the page. The navigation
in the website is also good and fast in showing the contents (Perry and Hendrick 2012). The
links present in the website, when clicked shows up another page, which then shows the
detailed views of the product. However, the layout of the homepage and the layout of the links
are very different with just a little similarity.
Comparison:
The two websites are compared based on HCI (DiSalvo et al. 2014) and Usability
principles (Schlatter and Levinson 2013).
Evaluation in HCI:
 Website 1:
1. Requirement: The website is involved in dealing with home entertainment
products.
2. Concept: The website design is made to represent a transactional site.
 Website 2:
1. Requirement: The website is involved in selling all kinds of products in every
different niche.
2. Concept: This website is also of transactional type.
Evaluation in usability principle:
 Website 1:
1. Learnability: The main dealings of the website are with home entertainment
systems.
2. Flexibility: Clients and the company exchange information from the contact us
page.
 Website 2:
1. Learnability: The website deals with the selling of all types of products over the
internet.
2. Flexibility: Clients and company also exchange information from a help page.
Recommendation:
This section of the report discusses about the various recommendations, which can be
applied to both the websites for improving the efficiency. Website 1 deals with home
entertainment products and the website can increase their ranges of product for better market
acquisitions. The website also needs to make a better layout and the featured ads present

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needs to be shown in a different way to change the information perceived. The layout also
needs to change the links as navigation can be made fast by implementing better program
codes. The home page also needs to show less amount of featured products as the presence of
too many products has the ability to confuse the consumers.
Website 2 needs to provide the information about their postal address. The layout is
very beautiful and changes are not required but there should be more comparison in the home
page and the products page. The retail tabs are shown only in the product page and not in the
home page and changes applied to it can show conversion that is more effective.
Conclusion:
The two websites provide in the document are successfully analyzed using the website
evaluation from the book provided. The evaluation and comparison is also done using the HCI
design and the usability principle. The recommended findings are given in the report, which is
an evaluation based on the principles that are used to evaluate the websites. Thus, it is
concluded from the report that findings perceived from the report will help the websites to get
more success in terms of conversion and engagement.

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References:
Amazon.com. (2017). Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers,
Books, DVDs & more. [online] Available at: https://www.amazon.com/ [Accessed 11 Aug.
2017].
Birt, J., Chalmers, K., Byrne, S., Brooks, A. and Oliver, J., 2012. Performance measurement.
D’Amato, E., 2015. Why now is a great share market opportunity. Equity, 29(9), p.4.
DiSalvo, C., Lukens, J., Lodato, T., Jenkins, T. and Kim, T., 2014, April. Making public
things: how HCI design can express matters of concern. In Proceedings of the 32nd annual
ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 2397-2406). ACM.
Jbhifi.com.au. (2017). JB Hi-Fi | Australia’s Largest Home Entertainment Retailer. [online]
Available at: https://www.jbhifi.com.au/ [Accessed 11 Aug. 2017].
Kantor, J. and Streitfeld, D., 2015. Inside Amazon: Wrestling big ideas in a bruising
workplace. New York Times, 15, pp.74-80.
Perry, R. and Hendrick, S.D., 2012. The business value of amazon web services accelerates
over time. White Paper, IDC.
Powell,T 2002. Web Design: The Complete Reference, 2nd Ed, Chapter 5
Ritala, P., Golnam, A. and Wegmann, A., 2014. Coopetition-based business models: The case
of Amazon. com. Industrial Marketing Management, 43(2), pp.236-249.
Schlatter, T. and Levinson, D., 2013. Visual usability: Principles and practices for designing
digital applications. Newnes.