Culture-oriented Evaluation Method for Interaction: Applied in Chinese E-commerce website design

Electronic commerce has been developed widely in China; however, there is a lack of effective design guidelines for electronic commerce website for Chinese users. The goal is to research the cultural diversity and give a method to develop website design guidelines for the localization of e-commerce. Culture-oriented Evaluation Method for Interaction (COEMI) is presented and applied in this research. It features as national culture and psychology being the foundation, analysis of web interface design factors the basis, and users survey the mean. A survey and interviews method were used in this study. Thirty-five Chinese participants in China participated, and questionnaires were used to research their satisfaction to the selected e-commerce websites. According to the Culture-oriented Evaluation Method for Interaction we proposed design guidelines to localization e-commerce website in navigation manner, proportion of pictures and letters, visual gradations, searching behavior, self-service, response of web page, and process of purchase.