Critical design factors for successful e-commerce systems

The primary goal of this paper is to identify critical design factors that have substantial effects on the performance of e-commerce systems. This paper presents a theoretical model that examines the relationships among detailed design factors, perceived quality level and final performance of e-commerce systems. Two consecutive empirical studies were conducted to verify the theoretical model. Results from these studies reveal that the information phase among four transaction phases was the most influential in the final performance of e-commerce systems. Among the myriad design factors related to the information phase, product-related information, depth and variety of the system structure, variety of list view for products, consistency of product and background presentation, and variety of presentation for product information were all found to be closely related to the perceived quality level. This paper ends with the theoretical and practical implications of the study results.