The goal of this Master's thesis is to explain the importance of the Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) at today's E-commerce market share. A lot of people in Czech Republic confuse this term with more popular and similar term: Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The CRO focuses on the particular website and its ability to meet the business goals. The goal of the CRO is to improve the website and its conversion rates for acceptable costs. The ROI is important here. The CRO is a broad topic so I focus only on one part -- A/B Testing. This technique is based on showing different variations of a specific web page to the users. They are divided among these variations. Each part can see different variation. In the result we can see which variation was the best in meeting the business goals. The goal of this Master's thesis is to thoroughly introduce this technique and the tool which is perfectly suitable for that -- Google Website Optimizer. It is free and worldwide known and used. This Master's thesis is divided into several main chapters. In the introduction I describe few marketing models that are closely related to the CRO. Then I focus on the CRO, A/B Testing and Google Website Optimizer. In the last chapter you can find a case study full of practical examples. So far there are only a few resources about CRO in the Czech language. That also demonstrates the fact, that the CRO is not much popular in Czech Republic so far. On the contrary in the USA or Western Europe these techniques are commonly used. Not only big companies like Google or Amazon.com, but even small businesses use the techniques of CRO and can profit from it. I think it is only the matter of time it becomes more popular also in the Czech Republic. Therefore I believe a lot of people find my Master's thesis very useful.

This thesis deals with the improving of website business performance through the optimization with a focus on user experience. Its concern is not how to accumulate more traffic to the website but rather how to motivate website users, persuade and help them achieve desired goals. The aim is to introduce the concept of User Experience (UX) and Conversion Optimization (CRO). Further on, to suggest a general process of the website optimization focused on user experience and to apply this procedure in a case study. The contribution of this thesis is to link the UX/CRO concepts that provide users with a positive brand experience and allow organizations a sustainable competitive advantage, differentiation and higher marketing ROI.

Nach zehn Jahren bedurfte es einer grundlegenden Überarbeitung von Sachsen.digital als interdisziplinärer Wissensplattform zur Geschichte, Kultur und Landeskunde Sachsens. Ab sofort ist unter dieser Marke die Präsentation der im Landesdigitalisierungsprogramm produzierten Digitalisate als sächsisches kulturelles Erbe zu erreichen. Daneben wird es ab Januar 2018 ein neues landeskundliches Angebot geben (Saxorum), welches gezielt Informationsquellen miteinander vernetzt und gemeinsam recherchierbar macht. Hier stehen einige neue Funktionen, unter anderem die Personensuche, sowie erstmals Beteiligungsmöglichkeiten zur Verfügung.

As the adoption of mobile devices grows around the world, the use of this tool to access the internet and, consequently, interact with a mobile store is also growing. A mobile commerce that is trustworthy tends to have advantages if compared to its competitors and, therefore, better results. This study focuses on understanding and measuring the influence of trust antecedents applied to mobile commerce, in Brazil. The final antecedents found are Data Controls, Website Interactivity, Reputation and Willingness to Customize. The results indicate that Data Controls, followed by Reputation and Website Interactivity are the main influencers of Trust. If Reputation is not considered as part of the model, Website Interactivity becomes an important antecedent. The results provided in this thesis are relevant, since there is a lack of research related to trust in mobile commerce. It has deep practical applications by helping an online business to focus on actions that are essential to build trust through a device with such differentiated capabilities and dynamics of use.

Community colleges serve a diverse population of learners including many older students counting on the community college for enhanced skills or personal enrichment. Many of these colleges target this population with programs designed specifically to meet the needs and goals of the older adult but may not consider this population when designing a website. Older users of a community college website have similar needs to the traditional student; however, little was known about the impact of the typical navigational links on the successful completion of tasks and obtaining information for this type of user. It is essential for educational institution website designers to understand which navigational links will provide the best usability for older adults with differing levels of experience. Previous research has found that usage-oriented links and pages that offer both usage and subject-oriented links yield statistically higher performance than subject-oriented links. Other research has found that presenting navigational links in the form of an action enhances usability. For this study, three websites were created utilizing navigational links in the form of usage-oriented links, subject-oriented navigational links, and then a combination of both to conduct a usability study to expand on previous work. This study was designed to determine the impact of such navigation on obtaining the correct answer, time on task, and the user's perception of the navigation. The research question, Does website usability and the user's perception of usability vary for older users based on navigational links, task type, and audience type? was addressed through two hypotheses and data which were obtained during the study. The first hypothesis: Website navigation, task type, and audience type significantly affect usability, was based on performance, and was measured on the two components, correct answer ratio (CAR) and navigation time (NT). The results indicated that the older user's ability to complete tasks faster and more accurately depended on the user's experience level, the difficulty of the task, and the types of navigational links presented, with usage-based navigation being the more effective solution. The second hypothesis: Website navigation, task type, and audience type significantly affect perceptions of usability, was based on perception questions presented after task completion and was measured by a four question post-test questionnaire, which used a 7-point Likert scale. This study found the older user's perception of usability varied based on the navigational links presented, but the experience level of the participant or the task type did not have a significant effect on the perception of usability. Therefore, it is recommended that designers of educational sites present navigational links in a goal-oriented, action-based format to support the end users of all ages and to enhance usability of the institution's website. This research found that if developers emphasize accuracy and the need to navigate quickly as a goal of an educational website for the older user, the website should be designed using a usage-based navigation structure. This research provides the detail to support a better understanding of which navigation type results in higher usability for the older user and enhances the guidelines of website design for this population.

Phishing techniques have not only grown in number, but also in sophistication. Phishers might have a lot of approaches and tactics to conduct a well-designed phishing attack. The targets of the phishing attacks, which are mainly on-line banking consumers and payment service providers, are facing substantial financial loss and lack of trust in Internet-based services. In order to overcome these, there is an urgent need to find solutions to combat phishing attacks. Detecting phishing website is a complex task which requires significant expert knowledge and experience. So far, various solutions have been proposed and developed to address these problems. Most of these approaches are not able to make a decision dynamically on whether the site is in fact phished, giving rise to a large number of false positives. This is mainly due to limitation of the previously proposed approaches, for example depending only on fixed black and white listing database, missing of human intelligence and experts, poor scalability and their timeliness. In this research we investigated and developed the application of an intelligent fuzzy-based classification system for e-banking phishing website detection. The main aim of the proposed system is to provide protection to users from phishers deception tricks, giving them the ability to detect the legitimacy of the websites. The proposed intelligent phishing detection system employed Fuzzy Logic (FL) model with association classification mining algorithms. The approach combined the capabilities of fuzzy reasoning in measuring imprecise and dynamic phishing features, with the capability to classify the phishing fuzzy rules. Different phishing experiments which cover all phishing attacks, motivations and deception behaviour techniques have been conducted to cover all phishing concerns. A layered fuzzy structure has been constructed for all gathered and extracted phishing website features and patterns. These have been divided into 6 criteria and distributed to 3 layers, based on their attack type. To reduce human knowledge intervention, Different classification and association algorithms have been implemented to generate fuzzy phishing rules automatically, to be integrated inside the fuzzy inference engine for the final phishing detection. Experimental results demonstrated that the ability of the learning approach to identify all relevant fuzzy rules from the training data set. A comparative study and analysis showed that the proposed learning approach has a higher degree of predictive and detective capability than existing models. Experiments also showed significance of some important phishing criteria like URL & Domain Identity, Security & Encryption to the final phishing detection rate. Finally, our proposed intelligent phishing website detection system was developed, tested and validated by incorporating the scheme as a web based plug-ins phishing toolbar. The results obtained are promising and showed that our intelligent fuzzy based classification detection system can provide an effective help for real-time phishing website detection. The toolbar successfully recognized and detected approximately 92% of the phishing websites selected from our test data set, avoiding many miss-classified websites and false phishing alarms.

The global financial crisis has proved to have had a significant impact on countries worldwide and South Africa was not spared of this global phenomenon. The ecological systems theory, family systems theory and gestalt field theory accentuate the impact a change within the environment can have on interconnected systems and it is therefore argued that the global unstable economy can have a significant impact on families and children. Literature indicates a vast amount of confirmation on the impact of the financial crisis on already poverty stricken areas. On the contrary, less focus is offered on the impact of the financial crisis on families within middle to upper class communities. Preliminary research confirms that although the basic needs of these families (such as food and shelter) have not been affected, significant change with regards to luxuries and expenditure patterns is present. Due to the fact that parents within families are also faced with financial difficulties, these changes are not facilitated and discussed with children and adolescents, causing unresolved emotions and uncertainties. This research was therefore aimed at the development of web based assistance for parents. In addition to the set aim of this research, the study arrived at findings that indicate and emphasise the important contribution of this study. Intervention research as research method was used in the conducting of the study. The developed web based assistance proved to serve as a functional tool for parents in addressing financial issues with their children and adolescents. It also raised parents’ awareness of the impact that a change in finances in the family can have which empowered the parents as well. It was also significantly noted that the website can be utilised within an educational setting which enhances the applicability of this study. The developed assistance contributes to society as it serves as a cost effective, accessible means of providing parents with practical guidelines and activities to help their children and adolescents deal with the effects of economic instability within the family. / PhD (Psychology), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Technology acceptance research is a constantly developing field. The disciplines that contributed to its development are either beliefs focused or system focused. The unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) combined both. The current research model proposes an extension to the UTAUT that accounts for online usage behaviour. The proposed research model is tested in two countries (UK and Jordan) to investigate the viability of the unified model of technology acceptance in different boundaries as a model of individuals’ discretionary usage of Internet banking. The study also questions the roles of other determinants and moderators in this context. Results found support for the effect of the proposed extension, website quality perceptions, on usage behaviour in both countries’ models; the total effect of this extension exhibited website quality perceptions the most influential determinant of usage behaviour in both models and performance expectancy construct was second in effect. Social influence had no impact on the usage behaviour in both models, which is consistent with previous research that advocates a declining role of social influence under discretionary usage and increased experience conditions. Furthermore, the moderating role of performance expectancy previously established in TAM’s research was supported in the UTAUT model in both countries’ models. Moreover, both models reported a non-moderating effect of gender, which, is also in line with recent research findings that suggest declining gender differences under voluntary usage conditions and advanced experience. Education and income were moderators only for the UK model. Although the research findings demonstrated that both countries’ models were “configurally” similar with respect to model specifications, the models’ explanatory power for usage behaviour was dissimilar: the UK’s model explanatory power exceeded that of Jordan’s model presenting an opportunity for future research. The current research contributes to knowledge in the field of technology acceptance research. It demonstrated that website quality perceptions, as a multidimensional concept, play an important role in the online usage context. It also demonstrated that the unified model of technology acceptance established in the western culture can be transferred to a non-western culture although with varying degrees of explanation power.

This thesis argues that website translations can be taken as a form of social control striving to achieve certain political or economic ends by the website owners from a self-representation perspective. Studying the Chinese-to-English translations of the destination sections in four tourism websites, this study aims to derive interpretations as to how the act of translating formulates multiple self-representations, which may be seen as ideological attempts to influence the perceptions of target-text audiences. This thesis has two main parts. The first, Chapters 1 and 2, outlines the research objectives, background information and the conceptualisation of the four cases, and a two-stage comparative method working within an integrated theoretical framework. The second part, Chapters 3 to 5, comprises the empirical findings, discussing how features of discourses hypothetically prominent in a particular dimension of the website context may come to manifest different identities of the website owners. The translation strategies for these features are examined to identify the aspects of these identities changed in the self-representation contexts. Chapter 3 hypothesizes that the common context of the websites is dominated by tourism discourse and other associated discourses. The translation strategies for discourse features expressing a set of shared identities of the website owners suggest that the concepts of consumerism and commodity advertising are re-formulated in the translations. Chapters 4 and 5 discuss further identities of the owners manifested in the diverging sub-contexts of the websites, and underline aspects of these identities foregrounded in the translations. Chapter 4 highlights the diverging organisational identities of the official and corporate websites. The translation strategies for certain organisational features show that different organisational stances, different beneficiaries and different business rivals of the two categories of websites are emphasised in the translations. Studying the identity of being ‘Chinese people’ formulated by certain re-presented features of local discourse, Chapter 5 points to the differences between the national images re-presented by the China websites and the regional images foregrounded by the HK websites in their translations. Finally, the conclusions summarize various notions relating to the multiple identities re-formulated in the self-representation context, as well as their economic and political implications.

Although digital media has been exploited to improve digital libraries, social networking sites, and book promotion for adult and child stakeholders, but encouraging children who have the choice to either read from a book or on a screen remains limited worldwide, including Jordan. This interest has meant that data about children's reading habits were needed, and the present study was intended as a contribution towards this aim. Interviews were conducted with Jordanian writers, publishers, child specialists, and various children's cultural centres. The managers and personnel unanimously showed that Jordanian children are not good readers and that a limited number of books are published for children as there are actual boundaries preventing Jordanian writers from publishing books. In particular, subjecting the typical sorts of children's websites - 'Club Penguin', 'PBS Kids', 'A Story before Bed', 'Baraem', 'Storyline Online', and 'Raneen' - to evaluation showed that 'Club Penguin' got the highest rank among the other websites in terms of multimodal features, usability, and language, while 'PBS Kids' got the highest rank regarding interactivity, and 'A Story before Bed' got the highest rank in reading activities. Although it was realised that most children were satisfied with the aspects of usability and ease of use rather than the structure or the aesthetic of the website, and were more attracted to the websites that provide multimodal features such as special characters, narration, gesture, and interactivity. The targeted websites' parameters obtained from the survey were used as guidance in the design structure of the KITABAK website, as a virtual reading environment for children's reading practices. The evaluation results that were obtained showed that there is a significant correlation towards encouraging children's reading habits and reading from printed books accompanying the website; girls showed more interest in reading iv than boys; and there is an obvious willingness for the adaptation of the website as a part of the Jordanian school curriculum. In addition, the KITABAK website was accepted significantly more than 'Club Penguin', mainly because the KITABAK website has facilities, games and reading activities. Also, results showed that children who were subjected to testing the KITABAK website for a one-week period proved to accept the website significantly more than those who were subjected to testing it once.