E-commerce interface design

This chapter is meant to serve as a resource to human-computer interaction (HCI) practitioners and researchers who wish to understand the existing body of research in the area of e-commerce systems as it applies to HCI. In particular, we report on research that will be useful to designers of interactive e-commerce systems. We identify issues that are unique to e-commerce systems design, which HCI practitioners need to understand. We attempt to answer the question, What do HCI practitioners need to do differently for e-commerce systems design?We look at the design of these systems as a two-actor system, with the role of the customer and the marketer being the two primary roles. The chapter is not a primer on marketing, Internet marketing, e-commerce systems, or HCI methods. Our goal is to identify issues in the design of e-commerce systems that are important for HCI practitioners to understand and to provide valuable references to existing research that will inform the activities of e-commerce systems interface designers. Additionally, we identify interesting research opporttmities for HCI practitioners in the area of e-commerce interface design. Please see chapter 36, The World Wide Web, by Jonathan Lazar for more general, Web-related HCI issues.