Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Effect of Usability on Website Performance

In this assignment I will discuss a fairly recent issue I had while using E-bay's website. 

What were you trying to do?

A family member accidentally ordered an item from the wrong seller on a website and I was asked if I could cancel it for them. I hadn't used E-bay in a very long time and had never cancelled an item but I imagined it would have been a pretty simple process.

How easy was it to do what you were trying to do?

Apparently cancelling an order wasn't as easy as I had hoped. I had to navigate awkwardly the site awkwardly to try and find answers but eventually just decided to do a search on Google for the answer. There I was able to to find the steps to cancelling something. I believed I had done everything correctly but a month later an e-mail was received saying an item had still not been paid for. That item was the one I thought we had cancelled.

What would have made it easier?

E-bay should make the cancellation process easier in someway. I understand it's people selling items through the site, but surely there have been several instances of people ordering things by mistake. Cancelling on a similar site, Amazon, has proven to be much easier and you usually have at least a day to do so. 

How did your experience impact your perception of the company?

I never liked E-bay too much to begin with but my perception of it decreased a bit. I shouldn't have had to dig around or rely on another site to answer my questions. They should have been readily answerable.

3 comments:

  1. Being able to return or cancel an order easily has a big impact on people's trust of a brand. You're right to point out that they really should fix this since people put their trust in E-bay that the purchasing experience is going to be positive. This is why they have the seller's ratings and reviews so obviously placed.

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  2. coinsidence! I do ebay too. The page of ebay is really messy and make me feel bad.

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  3. Unable to cancel the order really is a common problem for most e-commerce sites. My friend told me that because that site's payment system is unable to process refunds directly.

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