Experimental validation of a set of cultural-oriented usability heuristics: e-Commerce websites evaluation

With the fast growth of the Latin America electronic commerce (e-Commerce), it is indispensable to design effective websites. Evaluating usability issues allows improving the design. One popular method for detecting usability problems is the heuristic evaluation, in which evaluators employ a set of usability heuristics as a guide. Using proper heuristics is highly relevant. In this paper, we present a set of 12 cultural-oriented usability heuristics, developed iteratively, and validated, in their final step, on e-Commerce websites. The evidence supports our argument that websites which display characteristics relevant to specific issues of the four Hofstede's cultural dimensions improve their usability.