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Today many a Website features fancy graphics, well organized content, but rarely induces the visitor to come back on a regular basis (with exceptions of course). The electronic commerce revolution experiences a setback due to a lack of consumer interest and some potential customers turn their screens off rather than meddling their way through a purchase order. But why are customers so indifferent? This paper addresses a largely unexplored issue: the analysis of supposedly interactive electronic commerce applications. The paper defines the theoretical framework of the Web Assessment Model. The model builds on the three transaction phases-information, agreement, and settlement-and parts of a product performance system to embrace the notion of community-a central issue in virtual environments-a further phase is added, and media inherent criteria are derived. The paper closes by applying the model to the Web site of Swissair, the national airline of Switzerland.
Selz et al. (Wed,) studied this question.