Weight-modeling of B2C system quality

The efficiency and cost effectiveness of internet technologies have already transformed the web into a global environment for business. However, designing, developing and supporting e-commerce systems having quality in mind is a challenging task. The quality of a Business to Consumer system may be assessed from two complementary, orthogonal, points of view: as a software system and as a service to end-users/customers. As a software system it must be assessed by professional software engineers, the evaluators. They are best in assessing top down the system. As a service it must be assessed by customer's perspective, the end-user. They provide a bottom up evaluation approach of the system. In this work, these points of view are combined in a weighted model which uses the external quality characteristics and sub-characteristics of ISO9126 as a baseline for further decomposition into technical and user-oriented features. The model can be used forward and backwards: forward for evaluating in detail the qualitative strengths and weaknesses of an existing B2C system; backwards for balancing quality improvement with development criteria.

Research highlights► Quality of B2C systems assessed as a software system and as a service to end-users. ► ISO9126-based model that maps user-oriented features into quality characteristics. ► Forward use for evaluating qualitative strengths/weaknesses of a B2C system. ► Backward use for balancing quality improvement with development criteria.