Industrial Management & Data Systems

Purpose – A rapidly growing segment of the internet is e-commerce. The future of economic competitiveness for most enterprises relies on entrance and active participation in the e-commerce market. About a third of the time users fail when they try to purchase products on an e-commerce site. An essential problem with e-commerce is that the controls and organization are different for each site. There is no standard way of building the navigation of the e-commerce site. Most sites do not have a global navigation system and the local one may be confusing, like solving a maze. The goal of this study is to minimize users' look up time and make e-commerce sites usable so visitors can easily and quickly access information. The objective of this study is to provide an implementation method by which an agent of the artificial intelligence (AI) user interface creates a standard navigation menu, called E-menu, to increase the usability of e-commerce.

Design/methodology/approach – The selected E-menu items are based on a study of the graphical user interface (GUI) used in Windows environment and an evaluation of one hundred and two (102) e-commerce sites. The prototype of the E-menu system proves that a standard menu can be created by an intermediate intelligent agent, acting on behalf of the system user. Three sites out of 102 were chosen to be edited by the E-menu server for the pilot study. This study also applies the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) identifying components of usefulness and ease of use that predict user attitude toward the usage of the E-menu system by conducting a Web-based survey.

Findings – The survey result is promising and indicates that the e-commerce users accept the idea of the E-menu system. The E-menu system makes it possible to create a standard navigation menu globally for e-commerce sites. Although E-menu is not ready for prime time, the prototype proves that a standard menu can be created by an intermediate intelligent agent, acting on behalf of the system user. These types of agents will become more popular in the internet paradigm as the number of e-commerce sites increase and the usability of the sites decrease due to rapid deployment strategies and technological deficiencies.

Originality/value – The paper provides information on a method to increase the usability of e-commerce sites.