"Trust me, I'm an online vendor"

Consumers' lack of trust has often been cited as a major barrier to the adoption of electronic commerce (e-commerce). To address this problem, a model of trust was developed that describes what design factors affect consumers' assessment of online vendors' trustworthiness. Six components were identified and regrouped into three categories: Prepurchase Knowledge, Interface Properties and Informational Content. This model also informs the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) design of e-commerce systems in that its components can be taken as trust-specific high-level user requirements.