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Wednesday 26 December 2012

Systems Integration: Usability, Navigation, Customization

Systems Integration: Usability, Navigation, Customization... Amazon.com and Aquarelle

Amazon.com, Inc., hereafter referred to as Amazon, was started in 1994. It has its headquarters in United States. Amazon grew from a bookstore to an online marketplace that sells just about anything a consumer can want, and is considered as one of the largest online retailers of the world. Many times, Amazon has made a great company for researchers concerned with ecommerce and web systems.

On the other hand, Aquarelle.com was founded in 1987 as a flower retailer, creating bouquets by hand in several of its shops. It also sells artificial flowers and fruit confections. Its headquarters are in France, and it also operates an online system. The online system was established in the year 2000.

For a systems integrators the main task In determining issues of system integration would be to investigate on the usability and interoperability of the two systems. In this report, A customer’s point of view has been adopted in the evaluation. Usability is taken to be the ease of use of the system to the customer in accessing the services of the system. Interoperability is the possibility of accessibility of the services across various systems.

Pearson and Pearson (2007), state that usability of a website can be assessed using five criteria: Navigation, Ease of Use, Customization, Download Speed, and Accessibility. In the following part, this paper compares the two systems, basing on the experience of the writer in the two systems.

 Systems Integration: Usability

Jacob Nielson (2005) says that Amazon used to be a leader in terms of usability, but not any more. In the article, he points out that Amazon’s pages are all scattered, and every page has so many links and buttons. This in a way can lead to confusion among customers for there’s lack of a clear organization. On the other hand, Amazon’s suggestions in the form of Customers who bought this also bought… are a feature that enhances its usability and customer satisfaction.
Looking at Aquarelle website, the main thing that strikes one’s mind is the simplicity, afforded by the fact that aquarelle has not cluttered so many products on the same website. Its large home page provides an instantaneous acquaintance with the products. This is contrasted with Amazon’s thousands of products, which can confuse the customer.

Systems Integration: Navigation

Aquarelle, just as we’d said above, has a home page that displays most of the products. There’s therefore little need for elaborate navigation systems. This is advantageous to Aquarell.
When one looks at Amazon, things are so different. There is multiplicity of products, ranging from books, to clothing, electronics and so many other products. This complicates Amazon making their site more difficult to navigate. In addition, Amazon has links to other websites, including a search box leading out of the site. This is quite confusing.

Having had a desire to register and attempt to make purchases in the two web systems, one thing that surprised me was the absence of any link to login in aquarelle. Amazon has a prompt for the customer to login or register, but not so for Aquarell. Whatever the reason, this makes aquarelle more impersonal than Amazon.

Systems Integration: Customization

Customization for Amazon is unique. The system is able to offer suggestions to the customers, based on what others have purchased in relation to what the customer is viewing. In addition, the system remembers what the customer’s history in the website. A customer is therefore taken directly to products they may be interested in.
For Aquarelle, customers can select the colour and size of the bouquet. Customers also decide whether to send a photo, chocolates etc with the orders.

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