The Impact of Good Navigation and Trust in E-commerce : The importance of navigation and trustworthiness when creating a web application for selling emission allowances

Abstract: The purpose of this report was to study how the design of a web application can induce trust and navigability. To study this, a web application was created where the private consumer can buy a part of an emission allowance, tailored to the consumers’ specific needs. Since environmental companies are subject to hard audits, not only by authorities but also by the consumers, it was concluded that this type of web application is well suitable to test how design can induce trust. This web application was tested by different test groups in three iterations. The user tests made use of the Critical thinking-aloud protocol, System Usability Scale, and Smith’s Lostness formula, and consisted of two assignments followed by various questions regarding how the test subject experienced the assignments. After each iteration, the web application was altered in alignment with the feedback received from the test subjects. Each iteration had a completely different test group to ensure that the alterations were effective on a larger scale than only to address the last test group's concerns. The results from the user test improved with each iteration and after the final iteration, all test subjects were unanimous in that they experienced the web application as secure and trustworthy enough to make a payment using their debit card on the site. It was concluded that implementing a website according to existing theories and websites is important to create trust and navigability. Design, information pages, typography, colors, and shape, have an impact on trustworthiness while placement of functionality as well as popups for completed tasks improve navigability. This study can hopefully be viewed as a foundation for future research in the field of design and its impact on trustworthiness and navigability.