The electronic commerce is a phenomenon that has developed rapidly during recent years and has come to take larger part in the everyday life. The act of buying and selling products online is referred to as electronic commerce and today, this phenomenon is starting to take more space within the mobile devices which is called mobile commerce. The user no longer has to visit physical stores in order to make a purchase, it can now all be done from a device in the palm of the hand. The aim with this research was to describe what the driving factors of m-commerce are from a usability perspective and how important different usability factors are to the customer when performing mobile commerce. This particular thesis was conducted with a quantitative approach in order to gain information about the consumer behavior when shopping through mobile phone as well as finding the most critical usability factors from the users point of view. The result was a self-completion questionnaire with a total of 200 respondents. The results from the self-completion questionnaire points out that there are numerous critical factors that can have an impact on the users’ decision whether to perform mobile commerce or not. Furthermore, the results from the questionnaire pictures that most of the consumers still prefer to shop in physical stores followed by shopping online through the computer. The reason why other methods before using the smartphone to make a purchase was chosen, was mainly because of the limited screen size and input mechanisms on the mobile phones. The result also shows that the majority of the participants would cancel their purchase if usability factors, like errors and poor site performance, are not thoroughly considered in the application. This shows the importance of including usability in the developing of applications and mobile websites. This essay will provide companies and developers with important information that is needed for creating applications for mobile commerce with high user satisfaction. M-commerce is a rapid growing field of study which is important to research because of the impact it begins to have on business. For further research it would be interesting to continue the study of other factors that plays a big role when developing mobile applications for m-commerce. Security is one key issue in m-commerce and according to our empirical result it is of big importance for the users performing m-commerce and should be investigated deeper.

Availability of internet to a wide audiences has revolutionized how business is performed. Businesses now use e-commerce to trade products and services. The growth of e-commerce has been dramatically rapid among developed countries. Therefore, the adoption of e-commerce platforms is studied in these countries. Meanwhile less attentions has been given to developing countries. Developing countries can take advantage of lessons learned in the developed countries. One of the major success factors of e-commerce platforms in developed countries is improving the usability of e-commerce platform by considering user’s preferences. User preferences can be defined as feelings and attitudes of users for the interface and functional design of the ecommerce platform. This influences user’s decision and behavior. Considering the users preferences within an e-commerce platform enhances user’s satisfaction and increases user’s loyalty to the platform. To evaluate the user preferences a selection of usability factors are usually studied. Avicenna Research Institute (ARI) is currently considering the development of an e-commerce platform. For this ARI is investigating ways to consider users preferences in the design. This study aims to satisfy this goal. In this study previous research are analyzed, user’s preferences are identified, common used e-commerce platforms are investigated, and ARI’s perspective is included in the analysis. Using these information a set of recommendations on how to improve the usability of an e-commerce platform is given. For this task based approaches are used in form of participatory heuristic evaluation and observations. Interview is used to obtain ARI’s perspective on usability. The study has identified ten usability factors affecting the usability of the e-commerce platform based on user’s preferences. These include consistency, learnability, navigability, simplicity, readability, content relevance, supportability, interactivity, credibility, and telepresence. In addition a set of eighty evaluation criteria are presented to evaluate these factors. Using a qualitative approach, the study has analyzed all these factors in a multiple-case study. The analysis includes input from the users in form of observations, comments and questionnaire. This is combined with input from ARI in form of interviews. Finally the study concludes by providing a path for future research.

In relation to the development of IT-products it is very important that the software supplier is aware not only of the target group but also the field of application. Usability should characterize the whole IT-design process as, in relation to this context, design includes more than merely those aspects which are visible to and thus can be interpreted by the naked eye. The study examines the specific qualities and properties that substantiate the usability and the demands that a customer rightfully expects from an IT-product. The user and the customer are highlighted in the same context in order to demonstrate that it is through the customer that an IT-product is defined as being useful. Thus, from this perspective, the user and customer can be considered as being the same person. The empirical survey was based on those factors that were considered to constitute usability and each interview was conducted using these usability factors together with the intended IT-product. The survey has been carried out using analysis models in order to enable the assertions to be both validated and tested and to ensure the appropriateness of the model’s system and also the independence of the method. This qualitative study has been carried out using randomly chosen respondents and IT-products and the perceptions of these respondents in relation to what they felt were the properties that represented a usable IT-product have been noted. The analysis section deals with the usability properties which have been assumed to further substantiate the five usability factors utilized in the survey.  It is apparent from the analysis that is it quite possible to determine a minimum level of what constitutes usability and that this can be applied regardless of what IT-product is being described. The conclusion to be drawn from this is that the opinions and experiences of both user and customer should be considered in order to provide guidance in relation to satisfying the requirements with regards to the design of IT-products.