Evaluation of the credibility of internet shopping in the UK

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the credibility of internet shopping. Credibility, which refers to the believability of information, is an important consideration of internet shopping. Design/methodology/approach – The evaluation is conducted by incorporating Fogg's 10 Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility into Nielsen's heuristic evaluation. Furthermore, security and individualisation are considered as additional heuristics. Evaluation criteria are developed based on these 12 heuristics. Three UK car insurance web sites are selected for evaluation, including the AA, Norwich Union and Tesco. Findings – The results show that the Norwich Union site seems to be the most credible while the Tesco site appears to be the least credible. The most significant credibility problems are found to lie in the areas of “trustworthiness”, “expertise” and “real-world feel”. In other words, these three areas are key issues for future improvement of these sites. Originality/value – This paper contributes to the literature by providing a set of credibility design guidelines, which can be used to support the improved development of future internet shopping designs, especially car insurance web sites.