Towards a Framework for the Assessment of Online Store Product Catalogs

Online store product catalogs are the gateway to a company through which customers obtain product information. Effective design of online product catalog improves return of investment (ROI) and competitive advantage to the business. This paper presents a framework for usability evaluation of product catalogs of online store. We argue that from the user experience point of view, the critical success factors for highly usable e-catalogs are not so well understood. Our framework consists of the usability factors such as simplicity, attractiveness, effectiveness, product image, site information, interactivity, navigation, categorization and product details. The results indicate that these factors are found to have noticeable impact on the appearance of the online product catalog effectiveness. We developed an evaluation model and applied it in our testing. We found that while there are large potential benefits of this framework, there are also crucial issues that need to be addressed. The issue is such as the suitability of the framework on different product type. We believe the model proposed in this paper satisfies the requirements and challenges related to assessment of online store catalogs effectiveness