A Mixed Method Approach to Evaluating eCommerce Website - Towards Socially-sensitive Guidelines for Future Design.

The goal of every business website, blog and online shop is increase traffic or customer engagement with a view to improve sales. Attractive user interfaces (UI) and user experiences (UX) are essential to achieving these marketing goals. Therefore, this paper uses a mixed-method approach to evaluate a foremost customer-centric eCommerce website in Africa to uncover the usability techniques employed in designing its user-interface and how they were implemented to provide positive UX to shoppers. As a first step towards contributing to research, we conducted an expert evaluation of Jumia, using Nielsen's Heuristics to identify usability problems on its user interface. Secondly, we conducted a user-study of 78 participants to understand the effects of usability techniques on customer's activities. Findings uncover that although Jumia's website is engaging and easy-to-use, however, there are usability issues which could affect its conversion rate. In addition, we attempt to rethink UI/UX designs of such platforms with a view to offering socially-relevant guidelines and recommendations for designing or redesigning such platforms based on the unique requirements of an average customer in the Global South. The findings from our study could guide all stakeholders in the user-centered design and indeed, eCommerce loop such managers, platform and brand developers, and marketers in designing new or improving existing eCommerce websites that target customers in the Global South.