Using eye-tracking technology, similar user behaviour data was collected for each website,
including time spent to complete the task, time until first click, the number of fixations until first
click and the number of pages visited. The data were then summarised to facilitate comparison
across the organisations and analysed.
TelecomA’s results revealed clear usability and navigational issues, especially in comparison to
the results of TelecomB and TelecomC. TelecomB users had more fixations on parts of the
website indicating that there are more screen elements than on the other two sites. Although
TelecomB fared well when compared to TelecomA, its results show that TelecomC supports the
top-up functionality much more effectively.
Although we did not report on the specific usability problems identified in the poorly designed
websites, the next step from an organisation’s point of view would be to identify and address the
specific design issues. The added value of comparing UX and usability evaluation results across
organisations has been successfully illustrated. The results from studies like these could be
further used to set up benchmarks and improve the general ease of use of e-commerce websites.