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Evaluation of B2B business directories: “A case study of the
development of an online Iranian B2B business directory
(www.IranDirect.ir)”
A study submitted in partial fulfilment
Of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Science in Information Management
at
THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD
by
Erfan Dehghanfar
September 2010
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Abstract
Background
B2B is a type of website that conducts the communication between businesses
through the World Wide Web. There are many studies regarding B2B websites and
their usability features. These studies indicate the importance of this method of
carrying out business and its growth.
Aims
This research’s objective is to find standard features of a B2B business directory and to
find a way of applying them on the case study website.
Methods
Many methods of collecting data are used, including a usability test, allocating a
feedback form on the case study website and using the data of the case study’s
tracking system. The website, currently, has more than 400 viewers per day and this
number is increasing daily.
Results
The results indicate the main features which a sophisticated and professional B2B
directory should have. Additionally, the results suggest the ways that the developer
team of IranDirect can improve the website. As demonstrated further in the research,
most of the users are not satisfied with IranDirect’s services and its structure,
especially the brand section. Among the main features of the website, finding a
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specific company on the website is the hardest and most time consuming task. The
results also indicate the behaviour of IranDirect’s visitors.
Conclusions
It is concluded that there is a big gap between IranDirect and other vanguard B2B
websites. Based on the outcome of the results, IranDirect has a long way to go to
become a professional B2B website. The developer team should improve and
redevelop the website based on the proposed recommendations in this dissertation.
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Acknowledgment
I am heartily thankful to my supervisor, Pamela McKinney, whose support, guidance
and encouragement from the initial to the final level has enabled me to develop this
dissertation.
This dissertation is dedicated to my parents who have given me this chance to
continue my higher education in the best institution and support me in my life.
Lastly, I want to offer my regards and blessing to all of those who supported me in any
respect during the completing of this study.
Erfan Dehghanfar
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Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................2
Acknowledgment ..........................................................................................................4
Introduction and context ...............................................................................................8
Research aims and objectives ......................................................................................12
Literature review .........................................................................................................13
Business to Business ................................................................................................13
Internet Business Models ........................................................................................15
Success factors of B2B websites ..............................................................................18
Web usability ..........................................................................................................22
Search Visibility .......................................................................................................31
Methodology...............................................................................................................34
Literature review .....................................................................................................34
Usability testing .......................................................................................................35
Feedback form ........................................................................................................42
Tracking the website’s visitors .................................................................................43
Comparing the vanguard three websites .................................................................44
Results ........................................................................................................................46
Usability Test ...........................................................................................................46
Feedback Form ........................................................................................................54
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Tracking website’s visitors .......................................................................................57
Comparing the vanguard three websites .................................................................65
Discussion ...................................................................................................................71
Brand ......................................................................................................................73
Categories section ...................................................................................................76
Products ..................................................................................................................78
Information Pages ...................................................................................................79
Control Panel ...........................................................................................................79
Usability test ...........................................................................................................82
Website graphic and layout .....................................................................................83
Business model........................................................................................................84
Search engine visibility ............................................................................................85
Comparing with other three vanguard websites ......................................................86
The result of some of the changes ...........................................................................90
Conclusion...................................................................................................................94
Bibliography ................................................................................................................99
Appendix 1 ................................................................................................................ 106
Feedback form ...................................................................................................... 106
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Table of Figures
Figure 1, List of the selected tasks ...............................................................................38
Figure 2, Datalogger scoring criteria ............................................................................40
Figure 3, Task performance Rate .................................................................................47
Figure 4, Tasks Completion ..........................................................................................48
Figure 5, Tasks Completion and Click Count .................................................................49
Figure 6, Task Completion Time ...................................................................................50
Figure 7, Feedback Form, Find the information ...........................................................55
Figure 8, Feedback Form, Usability ..............................................................................56
Figure 9, Feedback Form, Does it helpful for business .................................................57
Figure 10, Visitors ........................................................................................................58
Figure 11, Daily Visitors ...............................................................................................59
Figure 12, one week visitors ........................................................................................59
Figure 13, Map of visitors ............................................................................................60
Figure 14, Map of visitors' location ..............................................................................60
Figure 15, Visitor's browsers........................................................................................61
Figure 16, Visitors Resolution ......................................................................................62
Figure 17, Traffic source ..............................................................................................63
Figure 18, Search Engines ............................................................................................63
Figure 19, Contents .....................................................................................................65
Figure 20, Visitors number after Changes ....................................................................92
Figure 21, Actions number after Changes ....................................................................92
Figure 22, Total statistics after Changes ......................................................................93
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Chapter 1
Introduction and context
Evaluation of B2B business directories: “A case study of the development of an online
Iranian B2B business directory (www.irandirect.ir)” is the title of the dissertation. The
author has decided to work on this topic pursuant to his knowledge about web
developing which was acquired during the past 3 years while creating and developing a
B2B directory of industrial and manufacturers’ website in Iran. Following the
aforementioned experience, he enhanced his knowledge by reading several books on
the topic and he found this area even more interesting.
The case study website in this dissertation, known as IranDirect, was developed three
years ago. The main service of this website is to provide information about companies,
manufacturers and business owners who are working in Iran. This information includes
the names of companies, their contact details, main services or products and so on.
IranDirect has classified more than 50 industries and each industry has been classified
in more than 1000 categories and different companies are registered in these classified
industries and categories.
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The main idea behind designing this website came from the author’s consideration of
Alibaba.com. At first, IranDirect was developed only for the automobile industry but
after a while, the developer team decided to expand it by bringing other industries on
the website. Currently, IranDirect is working on more than 50 industries. In addition,
more than 10,000 companies are registered in the website. The website has been
visited more than 45,000 times since it was designed. Every day, 200 users visit the
website. IranDirect needs to improve and develop. It needs to be more up-to-date,
usable and accessible for users. The outcome of this dissertation will assist the
developer team to improve IranDirect.
In further sections of this dissertation, the author will use terminology whose
definition is as follows:
Industries•+50 different indutries
Categories
•categories are defined in two stage (parent and child)
•+1000 pre deffined categories
Companies•+10'000 companies and brands are registered.
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Brand: Brand is a section of IranDirect. This section consists of Brand page and
brand details page. Brand page is the page that all the companies in a specific
category are introduced (E.g. there are 100 companies presented on “car
braking system” category and “car braking system” is one of the car industry’s
category). Brand details page is a specific page for each company. In this page,
the full information about a company is presented.
Category: Category page is one of the most important and most visited pages
of IranDirect. In this page, the list of categories and sub categories in a specific
industry is presented.
Users’ actions: “Users’ actions” is the number of pages that each user browse.
In this dissertation, there is an evaluation of three vanguard websites which work in
the B2B business directory section. These three websites are Alibaba, Globalsource
and Kompass. Here is a brief description about each of them:
1- Alibaba
Many B2B experts believe that Alibaba is the largest and the most improved B2B
directory website on the World Wide Web (HowSmb, 2009) & (Digitalpoint 2008).
Here are some facts about Alibaba:
Alibaba serves more than 35 million users.
The membership fee is around $5000 to $8000 per year for a supplier.
It was developed in 1999.
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Alibaba is most visited in China, United States and India more than other
countries.
It supports English, Chinese and Japanese languages.
(HowSmb, 2009) & (Alibaba, 2010a).
2- Globalsource.
Globalsource is famous because of its verification. This B2B directory verifies the
suppliers all around China. In addition, Globalsource is an online environment to
introduce exhibition. Here are some facts about Globalsource:
Membership is free.
The only language supported by this directory is English.
Globalsource is most visited in United States, China and India. (HowSmb, 2009)
3- Kompass.
Kompass is the second largest business company directory in the world.
Here are some facts about Kompass:
Kompass supports 27 different languages.
It has 8 different individual websites for 8 different countries.
Membership is free.
It was established in 1997.
Kompass is most visited in India, France and Italy. (HowSmb, 2009) & (Kompass,
2010a)
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Research aims and objectives
The aim of this research is to evaluate B2B business directories and find the best
approach for developing this kind of e-commerce website.
In order to achieve the research’s aim, these series of objectives have been set:
To identify the main features of a standard B2B directory.
To identify all types of possible business models and choosing the best one.
To investigate search engine visibility for B2B directories.
To identify usability features of B2B directories.
To evaluate three vanguard websites in this field.
To evaluate behaviour of IranDirect’s visitors.
To identify the current condition of the case study and propose the ways to
improve it, based on the outcome of this research
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Chapter 2
Literature review
Business to Business
B2B or business to business is a term which is used for every commercial transaction
conducted between businesses or suppliers online. According to Haig (2001) there are
two types of B2B: vertical and horizontal.
Vertical B2B websites aim to conduct a large number of online transactions relating to
a particular industry. Horizontal B2B websites aim to conduct a large number of online
transactions in the wide range of industries. The main revenue model of B2B websites
normally is member subscription or transaction fees as well as having other source of
incoming such as advertisement. B2B websites provide the companies, industries and
end users with many benefits. Some of them are as follow: (Haig, 2001)
Choice: B2B marketplaces provide companies and end users with a huge
number of choices of buyers, sellers and suppliers. This leads to have the best
choice among all of potential options.
Speed: B2B marketplaces assist buyers, sellers and suppliers to conduct their
transaction at the fastest time in a reliable environment.
Streamlining: B2B marketplaces help the internet users to decrease their
paperwork and bureaucracy. This boosts productivity and efficiently.
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Response: B2B marketplaces help the internet users to respond to the
enquiries from their customers promptly. In addition, it helps industrial owners
to catch all the unfolding opportunities. (Haig, 2001)
In addition to this explanation of B2B, Bloch and Catfolis (2001) introduced three types
of B2B marketplaces, which are:
1. Private Marketplace
2. Dotcoms marketplace
3. Industry consortium marketplace
Private marketplace
A private marketplace is a website which has been developed for a single seller or
buyer. In this kind of business, the owner provides the users with a specific range of
products or services. The problem of this kind of marketplaces is that the owner has to
consume a significant amount of time and money to prove the independence of
his/her marketplace.
Dotcoms
Basically this kind of marketplace is based on the new technologies and new ideas
which come from managers’ minds. These two advantages lead to an independent and
credible market. However, dotcoms have many difficulties. One of them is lack of
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enough knowledge and experience and the second significant one is lack of initial
industry partners. In order to overcome these problems dotcoms need to co-operate
with the existing industry players. (Bloch & Catfolis, 2001)
Industry consortium marketplace
This kind of marketplace has many advantages. The large number of players in this
type of marketplace results in financial power, playing a key role on online business.
Furthermore, the co-operation of many companies and industries in this kind of
marketplace helps to have a powerful B2B website with lots of valuable information
about products, prices and suppliers. (Bloch & Catfolis, 2001). This is the model that the
case study is using it right now. There are more than 50 different industry sections in this
website.
Internet Business Models
Before going through the different kinds of business models, first it is necessary to
define what a business model is. A business model is: “an architecture for the product,
service and information flows, including a description of the various business actors
and their roles; and a description of the potential benefits for the various business
actors; and a description of the sources of revenues.” (Timmers, 1998:2) A business
model does not provide a company the ways to make money. This is just a model
which can help a company to find the best way to represent its products or services, to
realise the marketing approach and to understand the position of the company among
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other competitors. Therefore, it is necessary to have a business model for each e-
commerce website (Timmers, 1998).
Here is a basic description of all types of available business models on the World Wide
Web.
Brokerage Model: Brokers are market makers; in this model the website provides a
facilitated environment for buyers and sellers to have a transaction. The brokers
charge a fee for each transaction between them (Rappa, 2010).
Advertising Model: In this model the website provides an advertisement panel or area
for its customers to broadcast their services or products. The revenue method of this
model is charging the broadcaster for showing his/her ads. This is an appropriate
model for a website which has high traffic (Rappa, 2010).
Infomediary Model: In this model, one group or institute collects and analyses the
marketing data about the internet users’ consumption habits. This valuable
information can help sellers and/or suppliers to consider their target market better.
The revenue model of this kind of business is selling marketing information (Rappa,
2010).
Merchant Model: In this model the website sells its products or services through
auction or price list.
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Manufacturer (Direct) Model: In this model a manufacturer or producer sells its
products or services directly to its customers. This kind of website enables the
companies to understand their customers’ preferences and sell their products or
services more efficiently (Rappa, 2010).
Affiliate Model: In this model the website is not focused on a particular domain
address. It focuses on offering an opportunity for all the internet users to buy their
products or services wherever on the internet that they want. Affiliate model business
encourages internet users by offering financial incentives. In this model, the suppliers
or sellers pay for performance. It means that the owner of affiliate model website earn
money when a supplier sells any product or services (Rappa, 2010).
Community Model: In this model the website provides an environment for its
customer to contribute in the website by sharing and producing content. The revenue
model of this kind of websites is advertising or subscription premium users (Rappa,
2010).
Subscription Model: In this model, the website offers some kinds of services or
products to its users. These services are available in combination of free and
chargeable mode. Subscription fees are needed for some services. Revenue model of
this kind of websites is subscription and advertising (Rappa, 2010).
Utility Model: In this model, users pay for the services of the website as much as they
use them. Utility model or “On-Demand” model is based on real usage rates. Internet
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service providers (ISPs) are an example of this model. They charge their customers for
the duration of internet usage (Rappa, 2010).
Most of B2B business directories use subscription model and advertisement model as
their business models to generate income. This type of website offers a classified
range of registration. For instance, Alibaba.com offers Premium membership.
Suppliers or sellers should pay an annual membership fee to get the benefits of being
premium users (Alibaba, 2010a). Another example is Kompass. They present their
subscription as follows: “A paid subscription to Kompass is a complete sales and
marketing support solution offering opportunities to build your business through:
Online Promotion
Sales & Marketing Databases
Tender Alerts
Sales Leads via RFQ (Request for Quote)
Kompass includes detailed company information and a sophisticated advanced search
facility which is only available to subscribers.” Kompass (2010b: 1). In addition to the
subscription model, by viewing the online B2Bs, one realizes that another source of
their income is from the advertisements (Neira, 2009).
Success factors of B2B websites
Prior to evaluating success factors of B2B websites; it is important to find the features
of a successful e-commerce website. Implementing an E-commerce website is one
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type of information system (IS) project. Therefore, it is possible to apply success
metrics of information system projects to success factors of E-commerce website.
(Andrea and Cullen, 2009) Some examples of them are: delivering on time, within-
budget completion and meeting the system requirement. (Espinosa et al, 2006) as
cited in Andrea and Cullen, 2009). In addition according to the Delone and Mclean
(2003) IS success model, there are six factors for a successful E-Commerce website:
1. System Quality: being usable, available 24/7, adaptable and reliable.
2. Information Quality: being relevant, secure, easy to understand and complete.
3. Services Quality: being quick to response, assure and empathic.
4. Number of visitors and number of transaction show how a website is
successful.
5. Repeating visit and using website’s services or buying website’s products for
the second time show the measure of user satisfaction.
6. The amount of sales, net outcome and cost savings are another factor that
show how a website is successful. (DeLone and McLean, 2003).
Furthermore Riyad and Ahmed (2002) carry out some studies regarding identifying
success factors of a B2B website.
Sales Forces and management integration can play a key role in internet
marketing strategies. Avlonitis & karayanni (2000) as cited in (Riyad and
Ahmed, 2002)
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Involvement of customer and supplier in the B2B website and facilitating
traditional marketing beside online marketing chan and swatman (2000) as
cited in (Riyad and Ahmed, 2002).
Satisfaction of customers’ demands, flexible collaboration with other trading
communities, considering the business globally and being up-to-date
damanpour (2001) as cited in (Riyad and Ahmed, 2002).
Development of inter-organization relationship assists the B2B website to share
and exchange information among them on an online environment karweni
(1999) as cited in (Riyad and Ahmed, 2002).
Trust and confidence between suppliers and customers is one of the most
important factors of a successful B2B website. This kind of business is not a
technology; it is a corporation and communication between organizations.
Poon and jevons (1997) and Hoffman et al, (1999) as both cited in Riyad Eid, et
al (2002).
According to Andrea and Cullen (2009), from an economical perspective, the main
aims of a business are to match buyers and sellers, to help with the carrying out of
transactions and providing an institutional infrastructure. The new generation of
business (Online Business) has a similar role; however, e-marketplace offers many
advantages and features for buyers and sellers. In this literature review, there is a
discussion about the standard features of business to business directory websites.
The standard features of B2B market place are categorized in three different
measurements which are critical features, nice to have features and general features.
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Critical features
1. The content of the website, including the information about the manufacturer,
seller and buyer should be editable and easy to access. It should be ensured
that the marketing team of the companies can easily edit and access such
information while they may not have specialised knowledge of IT.
2. The website should be well optimized for the search engine crawlers.
3. The visitors’ activity should be stored in a database for further investigation
about the visitors’ actions.
4. The visitors should be able to contact the companies easily and to send them
their enquiries (BrainRider, 2010).
5. The website should be able to manage advertisements automatically.
6. There should be a control panel for sellers and buyers to access their
information.
7. An electronic catalogue for each product should be provided.
8. A search and advanced search for users should be provided.
9. Supporting Multilanguage.
10. Membership facility for its users should be provided.
11. An easy way to contact administration team of the website should be provided
(Andrea and Cullen 2009) & (phpb2bscript 2010).
Nice to have features
1- Multilevel of access permission.
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2- Providing customizable report for companies.
3- Providing individual web page for each company.
4- Secure payment through the website.
5- Providing live chat support.
6- Providing RSS feed.
7- Providing detailed sitemap of the website.
8- Providing messaging facility for the buyer and seller to communicate with each
other (Andrea and Cullen, 2009).
General Features
1- Having a professional look, the graphic and the usability of the website can
attract more visitors. There are more discussion about the usability and
accessibility of B2B website in this dissertation.
2- Fast response. The load time of the web pages should be fast. Visitors do not
like to wait for loading a webpage. (Andrea and Cullen, 2009) & (Singer, 2010).
Web usability
At a debate in London which was hosted by Create Online Magazine, Jakob Nielsen
defined web usability in a simple sentence: it is just how to make a website easy to
use. Usability generally focuses on the end-users and simplicity. It makes applying
usability to an e-commerce website difficult because an e-commerce website provides
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the users with many utilities; therefore, making them simple and easy to use is a hard
task.
One of the most significant aims of usability is having a website to load fast. If a
website loads slowly, customers will not wait for that. According to Nielsen, there are
some common mistakes that web designers make: (Haig, 2001).
Emphasis on graphic: using more than standard graphic features especially
using Flash makes a website less popular for users.
Interstitials: interstitials are the advertisements that launch on a separate
window or pop-up.
Motion: moving texts or graphics on a webpage make the website
unprofessional.
Linkrot: any kind of broken links or links that go to out-of-date web pages are
frowned upon. (Haig, 2001).
Being usable is an important issue for B2B websites because nowadays, more
businesses around the world are heavily relying on the web. They have found the web
as an environment which can significantly help them to increase their income.
Therefore, having a place on the web, especially on a business directory is inevitable
for them. The business directories should be able to provide a usable and an accessible
place for the businesses to attract more customers.
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There is a research by Nielsen Norman Group about the usability of business to
business websites. The results of this research propose valuable guidelines for
designing a usable B2B website. These 23 guidelines are based on the Loranger et al.
(2008), Nilsen (1999) and Nilsen and Tahir (2001). These books are well-known books
regarding web usability.
1- Connect the directory list to the company’s website.
There should be a link from B2B business directory to the company’s website. This link
provides the users with access to the company’s website for more information; in
addition, it can help the company to increase its rank for the search engines by having
a link from popular websites.
2- Optimising the directory for the popular search engines.
Generally, there are many occasions when users cannot find their desired information
through searching the search engines even when they use a correct query. This is not
always the search engines’ fault. Sometimes, this is the website designers’ fault. They
need to optimise their website for the popular search engines. Search engine
optimisation (SEO) is another field which needs to be discussed separately. In this
dissertation, there is a SEO discussion about B2B directories. The following tips can
assist a B2B business directory developer to make the website more visible for search
engines. Web users usually seek a company’s name, a product’s name or description,
company contact details or sellers of a particular product. A search engine optimised
B2B directory should be able to provide this kind of information which is accessible for
the search engine crawlers.
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3- Creating a meaningful tag line and title for the website.
Tag line is a sentence which describes the aim and services of the website. It should be
on the first page of the website, in a noticeable place for visitors. Also, it should be a
short sentence because users prefer to skim the pages rather than to read them. In
addition, the web pages of the website should have relevant and meaningful title and
page description. This title and description have a significant effect on increasing the
search rank of the website.
4- Creating good first impression with designing a professional graphic design.
The first criteria that visitors of a website judge about that website are the layout and
graphic of the website. If there is a mismatch between the layout of the first page and
other pages of the website, users will feel confused and will not be able to find what
they want on the website easily. Thus, it is really important for the B2B website to
have a simple, stylish and professional design.
5- Present the industrial and merchants list on the home page.
In the B2B website, it is necessary to show the list of the industries which the website
covers, on the first page. The visitors should be able to easily understand the breadth
of the services that the website offers.
6- Using pictures and multimedia to describe the content of the website better.
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Generally, users do not like to read too much because it is tiring. They like to see the
pictures and choose what they want. It is necessary to facilitate the website, especially
the section which shows the products of the producers with multimedia pictures.
7- Using special B2B keywords in the website.
There are some keywords that can distinguish B2B websites with other kinds of
websites. These keywords show the scale of the business. Here is the name of a few of
them: industrial, professional, trade, wholesale, business, enterprise and commercial.
8- Showing the scale of visiting a particular product or company.
In the B2B business directory, the website can show the number of visitors for a
product or a company. Also, the website can provide a place for visitors to write their
testimonials about a specific company or product.
9- Defining the categories and sub categories of industries in the website clearly.
It is really important to have clear categories and subcategories of the different
industries on the website. It will help the users to find their desired information easily.
10- Using an easy to understand language.
B2B websites lose many visitors if they use ambiguous language. The website should
be easy to understand for all kinds of users. The links and categories of a business
directory indicate what users will see after clicking them. Loranger et al. (2008) offers
three ways to make the categories and links clearer:
Keep the link name brief and specific.
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Avoid using generic instruction such as “click here”.
Avoid using made up words (e.g. use about us instead of company experience).
11- Placing the search box in a visible place.
Web experts offer to put the search box on the top right area of each page because
people usually expect to find the search box on that area. The search box is an
important facility for the users to find what they exactly want from a website. In
addition, it is important to check the search facility. It should return the most accurate
information.
12- Providing a specific page for each product.
In the business directory, there should be a specific page for each company’s product
in order to indicate the products’ details besides its pictures, electronic catalogue,
users’ testimonials, comparison with other models and competitors’ models, its prices,
technical and maintenance information, support or guaranty information and name of
the producer and its contact details.
13- Make sure that the B2B directory loads quickly.
Loading a web page quickly is very important for web visitors. It is even more
important when the services of the website are for business. Time for B2B websites’
users is so important that they do not want to waste their time on loading a web page.
Therefore, the B2B websites should be very simple without too many pictures and
flash files because they slow down the load speed of a page.
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14- Supporting copying and pasting from the website.
The B2B website should enable its users to copy the information from the website and
to copy the information including the text and images from the website and email
them to somebody else. The website should also provide them with an emailing
facility, printing and PDF version downloading as well.
15- Provide users with sufficient information to reduce telephone contacting.
Providing the users with sufficient information on the website lessens the need for
users to telephone the B2B website for help. This will, in effect, save money for the
website.
16- Analyse the content of the questions on the phone and put the related
information on the website. Many users ask same questions. It is possible to
analyse the questions on a specific time period and creating a Frequently Asked
Questions (FAQ) section on the website. This section assists the B2B website to
have fewer phone conversations and to waste less time on answering
repetitive questions.
17- Providing an appropriate way of contacting.
It is common for B2B websites’ customers to contact the website. It is necessary for a
B2B directory website to provide an appropriate way of communication. The website
should show “contacting us” section on the home page and allocate a specific page for
it. Users should be able to contact the website via email, phone or other types of
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communication such as chat. In addition, in the contact page, the following
information should be presented:
Phone number
Physical address
Fax number
18- Do not ask users to register in order to have access to the information.
This is because, requiring people to register to get information about companies acts
as an obstacle in building relationships with users. This will defeat the important goal
of B2B sites which is to build relationships that would lead to larger market shares,
sales and profits.
19- Offer registration if users need to access special information or to personalize
their information on the website.
A B2B directory should offer registration facility for its users. This assists the users,
buyers and sellers to have a better relationship with each other and the website. In
addition, registration helps the B2B users to decide, buy and get a better support from
the website.
Furthermore, if a B2B website decides to offer registration, it should be aware of these
elements as well:
Explain the benefit of registration: a B2B website should explain what benefits
there are for signing up in the website.
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Provide free useful tools: if a B2B directory website provides a range of useful
and free tools for users, they will be more eager to register in the website.
Keep the signing up process easy. The signing process should be easy and fast.
The website should ask about main questions at first and then after a while, ask
users to complete their profile on the website.
20- As a marketing tool, show who the prominent customers of the website are, in
order to demonstrate the type of companies which have business with the
website.
Furthermore, listing the current customers of the website will help the visitors to
understand the target market of the website better. It would be great if the B2B
website provides a way for visitors to send their queries to those companies in order
to ask questions about the B2B website and its services.
21- Provide a section in a B2B website to describe the owner of the website.
Each website should provide a section which is known as “about us”. Visitors want to
know who the owner of the website is, what kinds of services are offered by the
website and what the history of the website is. In addition, “about us “section can help
companies who want to have business with the B2B directory. Therefore, it is
necessary to have “about us” section in website.
The information can be presented in “About us” section are as follow:
“
• The company’s offerings/specialty
• Whether you offer products/services to the public or businesses
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• Your scale and range of offerings
• When the company started
• The number of employees and customers
• Company location/number of locations
• The company’s revenue
• Major awards and recognitions
• Information on key executives, including bios and photographs” (Loranger et
al. 2008: 210).
22- Providing comparison tables to compare the products of competitors on the
website. B2B directory’s user appreciates comparison tables because it helps
them to compare the product in a specific range easily. These kinds of tables
provide the users with accurate information about the products. They can
obtain their desired information at the fastest time.
23- Suggest related product.
The B2B website should be able to offer related product to the product that users are
currently visiting that. This recommendation leads to increasing the amount of cross-
selling and up-selling. Loranger et al. (2008), Nilsen (1999) and Nilsen and Tahir (2001).
Search Visibility
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Search engines are the main way for internet users to find their desired information.
According to the statistics in 2006 by Neilsen/NetRating, 81 percent of internet users
(256 million users in 2006) used search engines regularly. They spent 27 minutes per
month to find their required information. This percentage and the average time
spending are increasing (Sullivan, 2006).
When people enter a keyword into a search engine query, search engine retrieves a
series of websites which use this keyword on their website. The place of a website on
the result of a search query depends on many matters. Developers of websites should
consider many elements to make their website more visible for search engines
(Thurow, 2007).
The commercial search engines handle more than 6.5 billion searches each day. In
other words, the majority of internet users, use search engines to find their
information. Therefore, making a website properly prepared for search engines is a
crucial job. In order to make a website visible for search engines, these tips can be
helpful (Thurow, 2007):
Include keyword in Domain name.
Using the main services of the website on the domain; for example, a site that sells
wheelchair ramps can use the domain name of www.wheelchair-ramps.co.uk
(Thurow, 2007).
Content of website.
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The richer the content of the website about its services and products, the more
visibility the website will have for search engines. Burckhardt (2009) “Content is
king, so be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on
your primary keyword or keyword phrase.” Burckhardt (2009: 1).
Structure each page.
o Page title should reflect the content of the page.
o Meta keyboard tags, 4 or 5 main keyboard of the page should be
mentioned there.
o Using external codes such as external style sheets in order to minimize
the lines of coding.
o Home page: all the major links with a correct anchor text should be
reachable from the first page. (Uksmallbusinessdirectory, 2006)
Sitemap: using sitemap helps the search engine to understand the structure of
your website easier. On the sitemap, there should be a link to the pages of the
website. Leonhardt ( 2008)
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Chapter 3
Methodology
In this dissertation, many methods of collecting data will be considered, including:
literature review, usability testing, feedback form and tracking website’s visitors. All of
these methods will provide the author with useful data. Studying and investigating this
data will assist the author to present valuable information for B2B business directory
websites. This outline can be applied on the IranDirect website to make this website as
a successful B2B directory website.
The author has chosen different methods of collecting data in order to cover all
aspects. All the methods focus on one of the most important issues for a website’s
owner which is namely, visitors’ behaviour. In addition, these methods will help to
make IranDirect more usable and accessible and help the developer team to
understand how visitors behave on a B2B directory.
Literature review
Literature review will help to obtain background knowledge about the topic of
investigation. In addition, it will help to answer these questions:
What are the standard features of a successful B2B directory?
What is the best business model for B2B directory websites?
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What are the main features of a usable B2B directory?
Usability testing
Usability tests aim to answer these questions:
Is the website useful for end users?
Can an end user carry out the task easily?
Is there anything that can be changed to improve usability? (Petrelli, 2010)
This methodology is based on this procedure:
Planning a usability test
Defining goals and concerns
Recruiting some participants
Selecting and organizing the tasks in the test
Creating task scenario
Choosing the measurement models
Analyzing data and measuring the usability
Recommending changes
Communicating the results (Dumas, 1999).
In addition, in this dissertation, a software will be used which works with Microsoft
Excel. This software will help to collect and record the data of the test. The name of
this software is Datalogger. This application belongs to “User Focus Company”, a UK
based company which works professionally on web usability. Here are the features of
this software:
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This is Donate ware software. It means that this software is free. If anybody
wants to help to develop it, he/she can.
It is Microsoft Excel compatible software.
This application can be customizable. It means that, the usability tester can
customize the name and details of each participant, pre and post test interview
and include a modified questionnaire.
This software supports up to 50 tasks for 20 participants.
It not only captures quantitative but also captures qualitative data.
It automatically generates charts about time and rate of satisfaction and other
elements (UserFocus, 2010).
Furthermore, in this dissertation based on The Dumas (1999) methods, the following
actions will be carried out:
Planning a usability test:
In order to have a successful test, these elements will be considered:
Recruiting people who know enough about web and using a website properly.
In order to record the data of the test, the Datalogger Software has been used.
The usability test was planned to be carried out in one week.
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Defining Goals and Concerns
The main goals of this test are to find out the following:
1. Whether the website is useful for end users?
2. Can a user navigate the entire website through the menus easily and quickly?
3. Can an end user find his/her desired information about a specific company?
4. Can an end user find his/her desired information about a specific category or
sub category of an industry?
5. Can an end user find his/her desired information about a specific industry?
6. Can an end user easily submit his/her company in the website?
The main concerns of the test are about the number of wrong selections and the
amount of time taken to complete each task.
Recruiting some participants
As discussed earlier, the language of the website is Farsi. Therefore, participants
should be able to read Farsi. In addition, the participants should have enough skills and
abilities to navigate a website and should be familiar with basic skills about how to use
a website. The participants mostly will be Iranian graduates or current Iranian students
in Sheffield and some of them will be Iranians who live in Iran or other countries. This
test preferably will be taken in person but there are some participants who are far
from the test coordinator. They will take the test through the internet by using
software such as Skype which can show the screen of the participant. This test includes
6 to 12 participants. There is a database of the name and contact details of the
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participants. The usability test will take place from 17 July 2010 to 24 July 2010. The
participant will be informed one week before that by Email. Furthermore, incentives
for participants are considered.
Selecting and organising the tasks to test
In this section, the tasks which may have potential usability problems and which are
more related to the main goals and concerns of the usability test should be chosen.
According to the website main services which were introduced in the introduction part
of this dissertation, the tasks which are selected are as follows:
Find a specific company on the website.
Find a specific category of companies on the website.
Find a specific industry and its information on the website
Register their company on the website.
The tasks are written in the Datalogger application as the below picture shows that.
Figure 1, List of the selected tasks
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Creating task scenario
A task scenario should be simple, meaningful and short. On the task scenario, there
should be enough information for participants to understand what they should do. In
this dissertation, the task scenarios are written down on a paper. The participants can
see the questions and then try to do the tasks. After doing each task, participants will
be asked to complete a form. This form asks about the test and the task which the
participant contributed on that. In this dissertation there is not a sequence scenario
but the four tasks should be done as one scenario.
Choose the measurement models
There are two measurement models for a usability test: performance measures and
subjective measures. Performance measures are counting the number of users’ actions
for each task and subjective measures are users’ opinions, perception and judgments.
This dissertation uses a mixture of both measurements. In performance
measurements, the number of actions and the time to carry out each task will be
written down and then for subjective measurements, after completing each task,
participants will be asked to fill a form about their opinion and judgment.
Performance measurements
As discussed above, for each task, the time to finish the task and the number of actions
will be considered. Datalogger application provides the author with a stopwatch tool.
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It can calculate the time for completing each task. The measurement of time is in
seconds. In relation to the number of actions for each task, the test coordinator counts
each mouse click of participants and then writes the number of clicks by each
participant on the Datalogger.
Figure 2, Datalogger scoring criteria
Subjective Measurements
The Datalogger application provides the test coordinator with a tool to ask each
participant about each task. This scoring system is customizable and is based on two
types of pre-defined scales. The first one is: easy, medium and hard (these three scales
mean pass) and the second one is: assist and fail (both of them means that participant
failed to complete the task).
Furthermore, the participants after completing four tasks will be asked to have a look
at the website and work with the website for at least five minutes in order to answer
ten questions about the usability of the website. These ten questions are based on SUS
(system usability scales) which is well-known as ‘10 items satisfaction instrument’
developed by Digital Equipment Corporation. The ten questions are as follow:
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1 I think I would like to use this website frequently.
2 I found what the main services of the website are.
3 I thought the website was easy to use.
4 I think I would need Tech Support to be able to use this website.
5 If I had a company I would register my company on the website.
6 I think this website can help my business to improve more.
7 I can teach my employee to use this website quickly and easily.
8 I found the categories and subcategories of the website comprehensive.
9 I felt very confident using this website.
10 I think the graphic and layout of the website is appropriate.
Participant rate each question from 1 to 5.
Collecting Data
Many people use Microsoft Excel program to collect the data of a usability test. In this
dissertation, as discussed earlier, Datalogger software will be used which works with
Microsoft Excel. This application assists to generate the results of the test in different
chart types.
Analyse data and measure the usability
After collecting data and its analysis with Datalogger software, the results will be
shown in charts. Charts will provide the author with better analysis about the outcome
Page | 42
of the test. These results can be evaluated and compared with other results from other
approaches of collecting data such as feedback form, tracking visitors and usability
features. In addition, these results can help the author to give some recommendations
to develop and improve IranDirect website.
Datalogger provides the author with useful tools to generate five charts. These charts
illustrate the results of the usability test on IranDirect.
Description of these five charts is as follows:
Chart 1: Task Performance shows the different scoring criteria per task.
Chart 2: Task Completion shows the proportion of Pass versus Fail for each
task.
Chart 3: Task Completion & Click Counts displays the proportion of Pass versus
Fail and the number of participants’ clicks per task.
Chart 4: Time Spent per Task displays the tasks Completion Time for each task.
Chart 5: Satisfaction (Satisfaction Usability Scale), displays the distribution of
different scoring for each SUS question.
Feedback form
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In this method, a form at the end of brand pages in the case study website (IranDirect)
will be allocated. This form will provide information about the usability and
accessibility of the website. In this form, visitors will be asked to answer the following
questions:
1- Did you find the information that you were looking for easily?
2- If you want to rank the website, what score will you give in terms of its
usability?
3- Do you think that this website can help your business to be more successful?
(Answers will be from 1 to 4). It is shown in appendix 1 of this dissertation.
This form will be added on 14 July 2010 and the data of this form will be stored in the
database of IranDirect website.
The results of this form will provide the author with an outline about the website and
visitors opinion. Most of the visitors of IranDirect are from search engines and search
engines direct the visitors to the brand page. It is really important to see whether the
users who come from search engine are satisfied with IranDirect’s services or not.
Tracking the website’s visitors
The website is under monitoring of three different real time web analytics services.
These services will help to study on the behaviour, region and interests of the visitors
of IranDirect.
The result of studying this data will help to recommend a model for a successful B2B
business directory and the ways in which IranDirect can be improved. The information
that can be concluded from these tracking systems relates to:
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The main traffic source of the website;
The regions more interested in IranDirect;
Whether visitors prefer to browse or search;
The industry section which is more popular;
The number of visitors and number actions per day;
The time spent by visitors on the website or a particular section of the website;
The type of queries which lead visitors to IranDirect from search engines (e.g.
whether visitors come to IranDirect by searching companies name or
industrials name or category’s name?).
Comparing the vanguard three websites
Based on the study in the literature review chapter of this dissertation which is about
the standard features of a professional B2B business directory, there will be a
comparison table about the three vanguard B2B directory websites and IranDirect. In
the literature review chapter, more than 20 usability tips and standard features that a
B2B directory should have were discussed. According to these features, a table is
designed to show better the difference between these four websites. In this table, the
author, after studying the websites will score each accordingly. The score rate is from 1
to 4. Each number stands for the following rate:
1 = poor.
2 = medium.
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3 = Good.
4 = Excellent.
In addition to this rate, the author will make comments about some of the features.
This table will be shown in the result chapter. All of this study will lead to help the
developer team to find out the best way to improve IranDirect. Furthermore, when a
period of time is needed for some features, 1 month will be set. For getting general
information about the websites, Alexa.com (online web monitoring), which is a well-
known websites’ monitoring system will be used.
These three websites which were introduced in the introduction part will be observed
in a week from 19 July to 25 July 2010.
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Chapter 4
Results
In this chapter, the results of methodologies introduced in the previous section will be
presented. Figures and charts will be used to illustrate the results in a more
comprehensible way. For each chart and figure, there will be a description. In this
chapter, the result of the usability test and its questionnaire, feedback form, tracking
system and the outcome of the comparison of the vanguard websites with IranDirect
will be shown.
Usability Test
The usability test took place in approximately one week. 10 participants took the test
and very helpful comments and result were obtained. This test took place in person for
5 participants and for the other 5; it was carried out through Skype software which
enabled the author to watch the screen of the participants during the test. The data of
this test was stored in Datalogger application. This application assists to generate
charts for results automatically.
The results of this test are as follows:
Chart 1: this chart shows the scoring criteria for each task. There were four
tasks in this dissertation’s usability test. The below figure shows the tasks
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performance. It is clear that task one (Finding a specific company on the
website) was the hardest task. Two participants failed to complete the task
without getting help from the test coordinator.
Task two (Finding a specific sub industry category on the website) was easy for
four participants, medium for five others and hard for one participant. Task 3
(finding a specific industry on the website) was easy for eight participants and
was medium for two others and the last task (registering a company on the
website) was the easiest task for participants. Nine of them thought this task
was easy and only one of them found this task as medium.
Figure 3, Task performance Rate
Chart 2: the second chart demonstrates the percentage of the completion of
each task. In the figure below, it is clear that only one of the four tasks has
been identified as one which two participants could not finish. Other tasks
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were fully completed by participants without any help. For the first task, two
participants got assistance from the test coordinator and it means that they
could not finish the task by themselves.
Figure 4, Tasks Completion
Chart3: this chart demonstrates both the completion of each task and the
number of clicks made by each participant to complete the task. The figure
shows that the average of clicking for the first task is more than three other
tasks. After the first task, the second one had the next most number of clicks
spent on it. In addition, based on the observation of the test coordinator, the
first action of all of the participants for the first task was browsing the website.
They tried to start browsing all the 52 industries but after a while, when they
saw that this job is wasting their time, they tried the search tools on the
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website. By using this feature, they could find their desired information.
Furthermore, as regards the searching tool, the statistics has shown that from
20/03/2010 until 04/08/2010 in more than 135 days, only 404 searches were
made by visitors (all the search queries are stored in the database of the
website). Comparing the number of visitors with the number of searches made,
it is shown that among the 6865 unique visitors, only 404 of them made
searches. It means that only 05.88 percent of visitors are eager to search on the
website and most of visitors are not counting on this feature and prefer browse
on the website.
Figure 5, Tasks Completion and Click Count
Chart4: this chart demonstrates the completion time for each task. In addition,
the figure shows the minimum and maximum time spent by each participant.
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The participants spent the minimum time for the third task and the maximum
time for the first task to complete. The average completion time for the third
task was less than 20 seconds and for the first task was more than 75 seconds.
Figure 6, Task Completion Time
Chart 5: this chart demonstrates the satisfaction rate. The participants, after
taking the usability test and finishing the four tasks were asked to answer ten
satisfaction questions. Participants had 5 minutes to have a look at the website
and get more familiar with its features. The results for each question are as
follow:
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Table 1, SUS Scales
System Usability Scale Histogram
Strongly
Disagree
1
2
3
4
Strongly
Agree
5
I Think I would like to use this website
Frequently
0 0 1 6 3
I found what the main services of the website
are
0 1 1 6 2
I thought the website was easy to use. 0 0 1 6 3
I think I would need Tech Support to be able
to use this website.
4 5 1 0 0
If I had a company I would register my
company on the website.
0 0 0 4 6
I think this website can help my business to
improve more.
0 0 2 6 2
I can teach my employee to use this website quickly and easily.
0 0 1 5 4
I found the categories and subcategories of
the website comprehensive.
0 0 2 8 0
I felt very confident using this website. 0 0 2 8 0
I think the graphic and layout of the website
is appropriate.
2 5 3 0 0
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In relation to the first question, “I think I would like to use this website frequently”, the
majority of the participants found this website as one that they would want to use
regularly in the future. Six people agreed to use this website frequently. The second
question, “I found what the main services of the website are” had six participants’
response as agreed, although two participants disagreed.
As regards the third question, “I thought the website was easy to use”, again the
majority agreed with this quote. Six participants agreed to this question. The fourth
question was: “I think I would need tech support to be able to use this website”. This
question can be interpreted as the opposite of the third question. The responses
points to this as well. The majority of the participants disagreed with question four.
They thought that they do not need a technician support to help them use IranDirect.
The fifth question asked “If I had a company I would register my company on the
website”. Six of the participants strongly agreed with this question. The sixth question
was “I thought this website can help my business to improve more”. This question asks
that if the owner of a company registered his/her company on the website, they would
think that IranDirect can help their business to improve. Seven of the participants
agreed. The eighth question was: “I found the categories and subcategories of the
website comprehensive”. Six participants thought that the categories and
subcategories of IranDirect cover all the industries in Iran. The ninth question was: “I
felt very confident using this website”. The majority of the participants (8 out of 10)
agreed. The last question was: “I think the layout and graphic of the website is
appropriate”. Five participants disagreed and two strongly disagreed. This shows that
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the majority of the participants were not satisfied with the graphic and the layout of
the website.
In addition to this satisfaction test, participants provided the author with useful
comments. These comments are:
Participant 1 (P1): it would be great if the list of industries was ordered
alphabetically.
P8: it would be better if the search facility allowed users to search
subcategories and categories’ names.
P5: existence of a sitemap could have helped me to find my desired
information more easily.
P3: on the first page, there is a list of industries. It would be helpful if there was
a short explanation, informing me what this list is about and what I can do with
it.
P2: if I had a company, how could I update the information of my company on
the website? The website should provide a panel for its users to enable them to
change the information of their company.
P1: it would be great if the website provided a facility for the users to contact
the suppliers through the website.
P3: the style and graphic of the website needs a revolution.
P7: there is no information about some of companies on the website.
P9: the navigation of the website cannot be done properly when using
Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0.
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Feedback Form
After two weeks, 15 users filled a feedback form. As it is mentioned in the
methodology chapter, the feedback form is located at the end of the companies list
(Brand Page) pages. Participants answered the three questions. They were asked to
choose one option for each question. The options are weak, medium, good and
excellent performance. The result for three questions is as follow:
On the chart below, 1 stands for weak and 4 stands for excellent.
1- Did you find the information that you were looking for, easily?
The chart below shows the answers to this question. The majority of users chose the
first option (Weak). This means that most of the users could not find their desired
information.
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Figure 7, Feedback Form, Find the information
2- If you want to rank the website, what score will you give in terms of its
usability?
The majority of users responded medium to this question. It follows that users
think that the usability of IranDirect is not very good and it needs to improve.
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Figure 8, Feedback Form, Usability
3- Do you think that this website can help your business to be more successful?
The responses to this question are approximately the same as the responses to the
first question. There will be more discussion about the result of the feedback form and
these three questions in the discussion chapter. Also, there will be some
recommendations for the developer team of IranDirect in order to make increase
users’ satisfaction. Furthermore, it is necessary to mention that it is hard to get a
suitable conclusion from the data of the feedback form because there was a limitation
in collecting data. The limitation was the small number of participants for the feedback
form.
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Figure 9, Feedback Form, Does it helpful for business
Tracking website’s visitors
Traffic of a website is a goldmine for a website’s owner and the developer because it
can help them to understand the users’ behaviour. However, there is a problem with
accessing this data easily and getting some meaningful reports from it (GetClicky,
2010). Nowadays there are many tracking services on the World Wide Web that record
the website’s visitors and analyse them and provide some useful and meaningful
report. IranDirect is under monitoring of three different tracking services. Investigation
on the data of these three services provides the author with the following reports. The
period of time for generating the reports was 1 month, from 15 June 2010 to 15 July
2010.
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Visitors
1589 individuals visited the website. They browsed more than 3900 pages. It means
that each visitor viewed 2.5 pages per visit. They all spent more than 6 days and 21
hours in 1 month. It means that approximately each visitor spent more than 6 minutes
in average. According to the graph below, the number of visitors and especially the
number of viewed pages increased slightly from the middle of June to the middle of
July.
Figure 10, Visitors
The figure below shows the daily visitors of IranDirect in a month. It illustrates that
there is a same pattern in each week which means that the number of visitors on
Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are more than Thursday and
Friday. This is because the majority of IranDirect’s visitors are from Iran and the
weekend in Iran is Thursday and Friday.
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Figure 11, Daily Visitors
The figure below shows it more clearly. This is the number of visitors of IranDirect in a
week.
Figure 12, one week visitors
Visitors’ location
According the map below, IranDirect is most visited in Iran. After Iran, United
Kingdom, United States, Netherlands and China are the countries that have the most
visitors.
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Figure 13, Map of visitors
Figure 14, Map of visitors' location
Visitors’ browsers
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The capabilities of the browsers used by visitors to visit the website are really
important because when the developer team wants to add some features on the
website, these features should be accessible for visitors. The figure below shows that
Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome are the most popular
browsers for IranDirect visitors.
Figure 15, Visitor's browsers
Visitors’ screen resolution
Besides browsers capability, screen resolution is another important feature for the
developer. The developer team can decide from this statistic how to fit a page on the
screen.
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Figure 16, Visitors Resolution
Traffic Source
Increasing the traffic of a website is the main goal of each developer. In order to
increase the number of visitors of a website, it is necessary to look at the traffic source
of the website. The below figure shows the sources:
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Figure 17, Traffic source
More than 80 percent of the users of IranDirect come from search engines and 98
percent of this 80 percent, used Google search engine.
Figure 18, Search Engines
Search keywords
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The keywords that users searched on the search engine are very diverse but most of
them are about companies’ names. The result shows that when a user searches a
company’s name on search engines such as Google, IranDirect will come up on the first
or second page of the search engine but when a user searches a category name such
as ‘automobile braking system’ on search engines such as Google, IranDirect will
appear on the fifth or sixth page of the search engine.
Content
‘Content visited section’ presents the tracked information about visited pages of
IranDirect. It means that there is valuable information about each particular page of
the website. This information is:
The number of times a particular page has been visited.
The amount of time that was spent by visitors on a particular page.
IranDirect has more than 120 pages. 100 of them present information about different
companies in different categories and 20 of them provide information about the
website. The following picture illustrates the pages of the website and number of
visitors for each one.
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Figure 19, Contents
This tables shows that users visited the main page, registration page and search pages
more than other pages. This information is for 1 month duration as it is mentioned in
the introduction part of this chapter.
Comparing the vanguard three websites
As it is described in the methodology part, the table shows each website’s score for
each usability feature. All the scores are based on the author’s experience, the four
websites’ information and other online references. The score rate is from 1 to 4. Each
number stands for the following rate:
1 = poor.
2 = medium.
3 = Good.
4 = Excellent.
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Features name Alibaba.com Globalsource Kompass IranDirect
Connect the directory list
to the company’s website
4
(provide sub
domain for
some special
companies
and link to
other
company’s
website)
4
(provide sub
domain for
some special
companies
and link to
other
company’s
website)
3
Link directly
to the
company’s
website.
1
The website
of some
companies
are
introduced
but there is
not direct link
to them
Percentage of visitors from
search engines
4
27.2% of users
was from
search
engines based
on Alexa
2
No
information
available
4
30% of users
was from
search
engines
based on
Alexa
4
Based on the
Analytics
more than 80
percents of
the users
comes from
search
engines
a meaningful tag line and
title for the website 4 2 3 2
good first impression with
designing a professional
graphic design
3 2 3 1
Present the industrial and 4 3 1 2
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Features name Alibaba.com Globalsource Kompass IranDirect
merchants list on the
home page
Using pictures and
multimedia to describe the
content of the website
better
4 3 2 1
Using special B2B
keywords in the website 4 3 3 2
Showing the scale of
visiting a particular
product or company
1 1 1 1
Defining the categories
and sub categories of
industrial in the website
clearly
4 3 2 3
Using easy to understand
language 3 3 4 2
Placing the search box in a
visible place 4 4 4 3
Providing a specific page
for each product
4
Provides many
pages and
information
for each
product
4
Provides many
pages and
information
for each
product
3
Provides
reasonable
information
for each
product
1
Provide not
enough
information
for each
product
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Features name Alibaba.com Globalsource Kompass IranDirect
B2B directory loads
quickly. based on
(websiteoptimization.com)
2
On connection
rate 56kps =
101.08S
1.44Mbps =
17.8s
1
On connection
rate 56kps =
191.08S
1.44Mbps =
22.8s
3
On
connection
rate 56kps =
57.08S
1.44Mbps =
6.6s
4
On
connection
rate 56kps =
33.08S
1.44Mbps =
2.66s
Supporting copying and
pasting from the website 3 3
4 (Good
exporting
tools)
3
Provide users with
sufficient information to
reduce telephone
contacting
3 3 3 1
Providing an appropriate
way of contacting
4
Different type
of contacting.
Excellent
facilities
1
3
Easy and
accessible
2
Easy and
accessible
but not
enough
information
provided
Do not ask users to
register to have access to
the information
4 4 4 4
Offer registration, if user 4 3 3 1
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Features name Alibaba.com Globalsource Kompass IranDirect
needs to access to special
information or
personalized his/her
information on the
website
Excellent and
easy to use
control panel
for members
Excellent and
easy to use
control panel
for members
good and
easy to use
control panel
for members
Does not
provide
control panel
for users
Show the website
significant customers to
indicate what types of
companies have business
with the website
4 3 3 1
Providing comparison
tables to compare the
products of competitors
on the website
3 3 1 1
Suggest related product 3 2 1 1
Total Score 73 out of 84 38 out of 84 39 out of 84 28 out of 84
This tables shows that IranDirect has a long way to go to become an appropriate B2B
business directory. The total score illustrates that among these four websites, Alibaba
is the best one. As it is mentioned in the literature review chapter, many e-commence
experts believe that Alibaba is the leading B2B website on the internet. IranDirect, in
its path to development, can set Alibaba as its model. Based on the above information,
there is a discussion and recommendation in the next chapter. All in all, among these
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four websites, Alibaba is the best one. This fact is highlighted by Alibaba’s turnover and
market shares (Riley, 2007).
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Chapter 5
Discussion
This chapter will discuss and analyse the data which was outlined in the result section.
The main focus of this section will be on the usability test and its results and
comparing the three vanguard B2B directory websites with IranDirect. In addition,
other methods of collecting data will be analysed and discussed. Based on the
discussions after each section, there are some valuable recommendations for the
developer team. These recommendations are the outcome of this dissertation in the
classified sections. In this part of the dissertation, the focus will be on the following
sections:
Content: This section includes the Brand, Product, Category and information
pages section. The explanation of each sub section is as follows:
o Brands: brands section shows the information about producers,
manufacturers and companies. Normally, the general information about
a company will be shown in this section such as contact details, main
services or products of the company and history of a company. Brand
section includes of two pages brand and brand details page. On the
brand page, there is a list of all the companies which work in a specific
category and on the brand details page; there is information about a
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specific company. In this dissertation there will be discussion about
what a proper brand section of a B2B website is like.
o Categories: on a B2B directory, there is a pre-defined and classified list
of industries and their categories and subcategories. These categories
help the consumers of B2B website to browse on the website and find
their desired company on a specific category. This section will explain
this feature of B2B directories.
o Products: besides showing the information of companies on brand
section, the information about companies’ products or services should
be presented. This section will discuss appropriate ways of showing
products or services of a company on a B2B directory.
o Information pages: these pages include About Us, Contact Us and
Sitemap. These are the pages that every website should provide. In this
section, there is a discussion about the content of these pages. Based
on the result of comparing with other B2B website, there are some
recommendations about what information should be presented in
these pages.
Added values: in this section, the added features of a B2B directory will be
discussed. These added values are:
o Graphic and layout: graphic and layout of a website can make a good
first impression. There is more discussion about graphic of IranDirect in
this chapter.
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o Control panel: each B2B directory should have a place for the company
owners to be able to read the received messages from customers and
add or edit information about their company and its products. In this
section, based on the result part, there is a discussion about an
appropriate control panel.
Usability: in this section the outcome of the usability test will be analysed and
discussed. The results of the four tasks of usability test will be discussed on the
previous section (Brand, Control Panel and category). However, the results of
SUS satisfaction part will be analyse and discussed in this section.
In addition, during writing the discussion part, the developer team incorporated the
suggestions made during the usability test. These changes on IranDirect have affected
the behaviour and the number of visitors. These data will be shown and will be
discussed in this section as well.
Brand
In this section, all the results which are related to a brand will be evaluated and
discussed.
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As it is mentioned on result section of this dissertation, result of the first task of the
usability test, results of the tracking system and results of the feedback form will assist
the author to discuss about brand.
As it is shown, the first task of the usability test is to find a specific company on the
website. The results of this task, demonstrate that two participants from ten
participants could not finish the task without getting help from the test coordinator.
Compared to the three other tasks, this task was the hardest one for the participants.
It means that when visitors came to the first page of the website and wanted to find a
specific company, they did not know what they should do exactly.
The result section shows the number of searches made during a specific time and the
fact that users are not eager to use the search feature of IranDirect. It is important to
find the reason for this problem. It might be because of its appearance and look. It
might need to be more noticeable. It is also prudent to ensure that the feature is
working properly.
In addition, the number of actions for the first task shows that this task, compared to
other three tasks spent more clicks. It demonstrates that the searching tool is not a
usable tool for visitors. Besides clicking counts, the time spent to finish the first task
emphasises on this point as well. In relation to the brand section, the study on the
behaviour of the visitors illustrates that when they come to this page, they do not
browse any other pages. This is concluded by comparing the number of actions by
each user and the number of visitors of the website. Most of the visitors performed
only one action which was to load the brand page and they viewed only one page. The
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brand page shows the company names and if available, the contact numbers and the
website of companies.
The brand page could not satisfy users’ needs as concluded by evaluating the feedback
form, the behaviour of IranDirect users, especially the ones who visited the website
through the search engines and the comments given in the usability test.
Therefore, the developer team needs to change this section according to the following
recommendations:
Providing a specific page for each company and present the contacting
information of that company.
Providing paging facility for the list of companies on the brand page. In
some categories, there are too many companies listed. Showing all of
them in one page, slows down the loading process of the page.
Therefore, a developer team needs to provide paging facility for this
page to show only 20 of the companies on each page.
Providing more information about each company. Majority of
companies on the website do not have website and Email address. Thus
it prevents users to contact the companies via the internet.
Showing the number of visitors of a specific company. It can help the
company owners to understand how many visitors see their company
on IranDirect.
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Apart from contact details of each company, the website should be able
to show all the products of that company (there will be more discussion
about this feature further in this section).
Showing the standards and certificates that the company could obtain.
Show the regions that company is active on that.
Show the type of activity of the company (e.g. producer, Manufacturer,
Manufacturer, trading, buyer, agent, distributor/wholesaler,
Government Company and so on).
Making sure that the searching tool is working properly.
Change the style and appearance of the searching tool and make it
more noticeable.
Categories section
In this section, there is a discussion about industrial categories and sub categories of
IranDirect. IranDirect currently includes 1000 categories and subcategories in more
than 50 industries. The second task of the usability test especially focused on the
categories. Finding a specific category looks quite hard but results show opposite of
that. 10 out of 10 participants could pass this task successfully. Majority of participants
mentioned this task was easy or medium difficult. The completing time for this task
was less than 50 seconds in average. Furthermore, in the system usability scale
questionnaire, the eighth question asks about how participants responded to the
question: “Are the categories and subcategories of IranDirect comprehensive?” Five
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participants agreed. It means that the categories and subcategories which are offered
by the website are strong features of the website. Besides the second task, the result
of tracking system and feedback will be considered. The search keywords show that
minority of search queries are about categories and the majority of them are for
company names. This is because of poor search visibility of categories’ names. Well
known search engines such as Google retrieve IranDirect on fifth page or more when a
user searches a category name which is listed on IranDirect. On the feedback form,
there were some comments which suggested that the categories and sub categories of
IranDirect are comprehensive. Although the developer team can never claim that they
can cover all the categories and sub categories of a particular industry. Categories and
sub categories should be updated regularly. Other websites which are working as a
B2B business directory inside and outside of Iran can be a good sample for the
developer team.
The third task was about finding a specific industry. List of all the industries are
available on the first page of IranDirect. Therefore, it should have been easy for all the
participants of the usability test to find a specific industry on the website. In this task,
the majority of participants thought it was an easy task. Average number of clicks to
find the specific industry name was not more than 2 clicks and the average time it took
to complete this task was less than 15 seconds. This means that it was clear and easy
for most of the users to find an industry. Thus the developer team need to consider
the following recommendations:
Change the order of industries’ names on the first page to alphabetic order.
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Update the categories and sub categories of IranDirect regularly by comparing
them with other websites. It can be a good idea to hire different consultants in
different industries to review the relevant categories and sub categories.
Products
In this section there is a discussion about how to presenting products on a B2B
directory. In this part, the results of tracking system, feedback form and standards
feature of a B2B directory will be discussed. Currently IranDirect is not offering this
section on its website. The recommendations and suggestions which are outcomes of
this discussion will help the developer team of IranDirect to complete and add this
section on the website.
Based on the results of comparing three vanguard B2B websites and IranDirect and
based on the literature review of this dissertation. Each standard B2B business
directory that introducing companies and their contact details should present the
products and main services of the companies. The results show that an appropriate
way of showing products or services should consider the following recommendations:
Before obtaining company’s product specification it is necessary to find the
classification of the product. It means that for example if the product is in
range of Rice the website should automatically ask for the specifications which
are related to rice (e.g. Texture, Kind, Cultivation, Type, Colour and so on).
After that the general specification about the products will be asked. These
specifications are:
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o Product name, product Image, full description, minimum amount of
order, weight, place of origin and so on.
The website should provide a facility for sellers and producers to show the
information about payment, price and delivery information.
The website should provide a facility for sellers and producers to show the
catalogue of each product.
Information Pages
Based on the result of comparing IranDirect with other vanguard websites, the
following information concerning About Us and Contact Us pages has been obtained.
o About US: Compared to Alibaba.com, the information which is given on
IranDirect is not sufficient at all. The About Us page should cover the
following information: company overview, history and milestones,
vision and goals, management team and so on.
o Contact Us: currently IranDirect only provides a contacting box on the
Contact Us page. In addition, IranDirect should, similar to Kompass,
show the telephone number, Fax, Email and Physical address.
Control Panel
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This part discusses the control panel which is a common feature of all standard B2Bs.
IranDirect has not yet provided this feature for its visitors. This discussion is based on
the comparison between three vanguard B2B directory websites and IranDirect; the
results of the usability test, especially the fourth task and the standards features in
literature review chapter and the data of tracking system.
According to standard features of a sophisticated B2B business directory, a standard
B2B directory should be able to provide a reliable control panel. In the control panel,
users should be able to add, edit and update their products, company’s specification
and contact setting. In addition, users should be able to view enquires which they
received from their customers through the website. Only users who have registered
with the website and their registration has been approved can have an account to log
into the control panel.
Alibaba.com calls its control panel “My Alibaba”. Alibaba introduces it as follows:
“My Alibaba is your personal communication and trade management tool:
Check and store messages from trade partners
Add and Manage Product Listings, Buying Leads
Subscribe to and manage your Trade Alerts
Organize and get updates from your Contacts.” (Alibaba, 2010b : 1)
My Alibaba includes the following main sections and functions:
A Message Centre: allowing users to view all messages received and sent.
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Editing Profile: enabling users to create and edit a Company Profile.
In Community: allowing users to get useful advice from trade experts and other
experienced members, post topics, ask questions, get the latest trade news and
more.
Editing Products: enabling users to display the products of the company in
order to receive messages from buyers and to sell the products. (Alibaba,
2010b)
Besides Alibaba, Kompass has offered a control panel with the following main sections:
Editing and updating the following information:
o General information about the company such as: contact details, the
nature of the business and number of employees.
o Company appearance, which is connecting a company to the defined
categories and classifications.
o Company region information shows the marketing target of a company.
o Direct contact details of a person in the company.
o Products and main services of the company.
o Contacting inbox, which is providing the companies with a facility to
have direct communication between suppliers and customers.
Uploading and editing catalogue of the company. (Kompass, 2010b)
The fourth task was about another main function of website which is adding new
companies on the website by users. The results show that this task was the easiest task
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for participants to handle it. 100 percent of participant could finish this task properly
and ninety percent of them thought this task was easy. Therefore, the place of this
feature on the top menu bar is accessible and the way that this menu is designed is
easy to understand. In order to develop the control panel the developer team needs to
consider the above features of a standard B2B website’s control panel. In addition the
security and user management of the control panel is an extremely important issue
that should be taken into account.
Usability test
In the usability test, there was also a satisfaction questionnaire in which participants
were asked to answer 10 questions. All of these questions were related to the usability
of IranDirect. The result of this questionnaire has been set out in the result section of
this dissertation. Here is more discussion about the result. This result shows that after
getting familiar with the website, participants were more eager to use it. For example,
the majority of them agreed to the first questions which asked “Do you like to use this
website frequently?” The answers to the other questions such pinpoint to this fact as
well: question 2 (I could find the main services of website), question 5 (If I had a
company I would register my company on the website), question 6 (I think the website
can help my business to improve) and question 9 (I felt confident when I use this
website).
It follows that when users understand the main services of a website better, they will
get more eager to use the website. Therefore, the developer team should find a way to
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present the services of the website in such a way that they would be clear and
comprehensive at the users’ first glance. The developer team should also consider the
usability tips that will be explained in the next section of the Discussion which explains
the usability features that vanguard websites utilise on their websites.
The fourth question of the SUS satisfaction questionnaire asked participants’ opinion
about having technical support to help them while using the website. Most of them
disagreed with this feature. This suggests that the services of the website in its current
form are clear and easy to understand and visitors do not need to contact technical
support to use the website.
Website graphic and layout
The last question of the satisfaction questionnaire in the usability test was about the
layout and graphic of the website. The result shows that participants are not really
pleased with the graphic of the website. In addition, in the feedback form and the
usability test, there are some comments about the graphic of the website. The gist of
the comments is that “It is too simple”. Therefore, the developer team needs to
consider these comments and change the style of the website to look more
professional.
The visitors’ screen resolution and web browsers are shown in the result chapter. Web
browsers statistics illustrates that Microsoft internet Explorer is the most popular
browser for IranDirect’s visitors. Therefore, the website that the developer team
would design and implement should be compatible with every web browser especially
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with Microsoft internet Explorer. In addition, regarding the screen resolution, the
result illustrates that the majority of IranDirect’s visitors are using the screens with
1024 pixels width and 768pixels height. Thus, the developer team should not design
the pages of the website with the width of more than 1024 pixels and it is
recommended that the width of the pages should be less than 980 pixels because
there should be a blank space on both sides of each page. This blank space helps the
users of website to read the content better (Nilsen & Tahir, 2001)
Business model
Based on the studies in the literature review Chapter, the B2B directories’ business
models are subscription and advertisement. All the vanguard B2B websites are using
these models of earning money. The important issue here for the B2B website owners
is the security of the website because they are dealing with transferring money
through the internet. Regarding IranDirect and its business model, the following
recommendations should be considered.
IranDirect should provide an environment for its customers to be able to
subscribe and have special account on the website. In order to make this
feature available on the website, the developer team should implement the
control panel.
The developer team should ensure that the website has a strong security and
to also contract with online banks which can provide online money
transactions.
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All types of subscriptions should be defined. A table should be provided on the
website and explain the differences of all types of subscriptions. In addition,
there should be enough explanation for people who want to have
advertisement on the website. For instance, the width and height of the banner
should be defined.
Search engine visibility
The following is a discussion about the search engine visibility of IranDirect which is
based on the studies in the literature review chapter and the result of the tracking
system. Currently, more than 80 percent of IranDirect’s visitors are directed to it
through search engines. Therefore, it is necessary to examine search engine
optimisation thoroughly. When observing these visitors’ actions, it is evident that
most of them searched for the details of a company by its name or contact details and
subsequently were directed to IranDirect. Therefore, the developer team needs to
enhance the website, especially, the brand and brand details page to make them more
visible for search engines. The team should also find out why the number of visitors
who searched a category name or industry name is few. In order to make IranDirect
more familiar for search engines, the developer team should carry out the following:
Change the description (a HTML tag) of each page and make it more related to
that specific page.
Create a standard sitemap which has a link to all the pages of the website.
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Make the style and layout source code of website more external. (It means that
the developer team should reduce the amount of duplicated codes in order to
make the page lighter).
Review the pages’ title and change them if necessary.
Make the content of the website richer, for example, the page of “About us”
needs more text and explanation.
Comparing with other three vanguard websites
There is a table in the result section of this dissertation which evaluates three
vanguard B2B directories on the internet and compares their features with IranDirect’s
features. The result is shown on the table. The following is the discussion and analysis
of this result. The discussion will be made for each item separately.
Connecting the website to the companies’ websites: IranDirect should provide
more accurate information about the companies’ websites some of them are
not up-to-date. Those who commented on the feedback form mentioned this
as well. It is important to check the broken link and then remove it from the
website. In addition, IranDirect needs to provide more information about the
companies’ websites. There are many companies on IranDirect that do not
have a website on their specification.
Tag line and title: compared to other B2B directory websites, IranDirect has a
meaningful and an appropriate page title but the tag lines in some pages are
not professional and helpful. For example, on the first page there is not any
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explanation about the website and its main services. Brand page and industrial
page (the page that provide all the categories and sub categories of a specific
industry) also do not provide a meaningful tag line. Therefore, the developer
team should look for a simple, short and meaningful tag line for the following
pages: brand, industrial, main page and free registration page of the website.
Presetting information on the first page:
The first page of a website is the most important page because “Usability experts,
including Jakob Nielsen, have long argued that your homepage is the most valuable
real estate of your website. As a result, lots of web designers and developers still
spend most of their time on the design of the home page.” (Gócza, 2010 :1).
Alibaba.com presents the following elements on the first page:
o List of all categories.
o List of featured products.
o Stock price watch.
o Visitors’ stories and comments.
o List of upcoming trade show and exhibitions.
o Search panel.
o Registered users’ tools box.
Globalsource presents the following elements on the first page:
o Search panel.
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o Registered users’ tools box.
o List of all the categories.
o Latest News and researches.
o Top products and searches.
Kompass.com presents the following elements on the first page:
o Search panel.
o Registered users’ tools box.
o Explanation of Kompass strength point.
IranDirect presents the following elements on the first page:
o Search panel.
o List of all industries on the website.
By comparing these elements it can be comprehended that IranDirect’s home page
does not provide all the necessary information. It is also important to consider the
bandwidth of internet in Iran. The pages should be easy to load. Based on the research
by Iran CSOs Training & Research Centre, (2005) and based on the observation of the
author, the speed of the internet, in average, is less than 144kbps. Therefore,
IranDirect can improve its home page by adding some features on the first page. These
features can be: registered users’ control panel and advanced search tool.
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Using multimedia: using flash and other multimedia features is not
recommended by usability experts, especially, in a B2B website which is related
to business and in which the performance of the website is more important
than the graphic and its layout. Nielsen states that “Although multimedia has
its role on the Web, current Flash technology tends to discourage usability for
three reasons: it makes bad design more likely, it breaks with the Web's
fundamental interaction style, and it consumes resources that would be better
spent enhancing a site's core value.” (Nielsen 1999: 1). However, a B2B website
should have a professional style and graphic. As it is mentioned earlier in the
discussion part. The layout and graphic of website could not satisfy users’
needs. It should be improved.
Scale of visiting a particular company or products: in the recent improvement
of IranDirect, the developer team added this feature to the website. On the
brand details page, the number of visitors of each specific brand will be shown.
This feature, not only can help the owner of the business to understand how
many visitors visited the company but also can help the developer team of
IranDirect to see what companies are not popular for visitors. The details of
these companies may be needed to be reviewed.
Placing the search box in a visible place: as it is discussed earlier, searching
tools is a very important feature that a B2B directory should provide. Most of
the successful B2B directories work on this feature to make it more powerful
and helpful. The searching tool on IranDirect is not working properly. The
developer team needs to add some basic feature to that such as advanced
search, search on the categories and search on the products.
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Provide users with sufficient contact details information: at the current time
IranDirect just show the contacting information such as: address, phone, fax
and in some cases website and email address of companies. This information is
sufficient for having contact accordingly but IranDirect should provide a facility
for its visitors to have other ways of virtual contact through the website. It
means that IranDirect should provide a control panel for the companies and let
them receive enquires and messages from their visitors through the website.
This facility is on other vanguard B2B directories and IranDirect should provide
it for its users.
Compare the services of the website with its competitors: IranDirect has three
main competitors in Iran. IranDirect has some strengths and weaknesses
compared to them. It can help the visitors of IranDirect to see a comparison
table of these four B2B directory website in Iran. This comparison can be made
on the number of registered companies, features, number of visitors, and
quality of services.
The result of some of the changes
The developer team, after getting some feedback from the author, started upgrading
IranDirect based on the recommendation. These changes are as follow:
Designing and implementing a new page for each company. In this page more
information about each company such as address and description of main
services of each company is shown. The name of this page is Brand Details.
Enhancing the search tools on the website.
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Putting the names of the industries in an alphabetical order.
Change the graphic and style of the website to look more professional.
Add more company on the website. The number of registered companies is
34000 currently.
Connect IranDirect to the companies’ websites by providing a link on the brand
details page.
Change the title and description of the pages in order to make them more
visible for search engines.
After making these alterations on IranDirect, the following changes resulted
immediately:
The number of visitors increased.
The number of actions increased.
The number of website pages increased.
The length of time spent on the website increased.
The satisfaction rate based on the Feedback form got better.
As regards most of the registered companies on IranDirect, Google started to
retrieve IranDirect on its first page when they were searched.
The pictures below show the result of the changes clearly.
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Figure 20, Visitors number after Changes
This picture shows that after 2nd of August 2010, when the changes occurred, the
number of visitors increased from average of less than 100 to less than 150. The two
days that the number of visitors had dropped is because of the weekend.
Figure 21, Actions number after Changes
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The graph above shows that the number of actions (page views) of users increased
from 2nd of August 2010. The peak of that is 897 actions.
Figure 22, Total statistics after Changes
The above table shows the summary of the users’ behaviour in one month. The
changes were implemented after 2 weeks had passed. Therefore, the table shows the
users’ behaviour before and after the changes. The table illustrates that the number of
visitors of IranDirect, after the changes took place, have increased by 18 percent and
the number of actions have increased by 67 percent.
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Chapter 6
Conclusion
This study has introduced the ways and techniques for a simple B2B website to
become more professional and sophisticated. These techniques can assist a B2B
website to become more usable, accessible and visible for search engines. This
dissertation has focused on a website that the author initially designed and
subsequently developed. IranDirect is the name of this website. In this study,
recommendations have been made for the development of IranDirect following the
evaluation of its current condition, its comparison with other B2B vanguard websites
and analysing the standard features of a B2B website. These recommendations have
been proposed in the discussion chapter. They are, essentially, the outcome of this
dissertation. In order to implement them, the developer team should divide them into
several groups. Each task should contain several sub-tasks which in turn entail the
recommendations. For example, implementing the control panel can be named as a
task and implementing the messaging centre can be named as a sub-task. These
recommendations can assist IranDirect in the following matters:
To become more visible for search engines: This will result in more visitors and
effectively, in more money being made.
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To become more usable and accessible for users: This leads to an increase in
the number of users’ actions (page view) and the length of time that they
spend on the website.
To have more accurate information on the website: This takes place when the
control panel becomes available. The control panel enables the users to add or
update the information about their company and their products.
More loyalty from users: This will result when the satisfaction rate of users
increases. Consequently, users will choose IranDirect as their first choice to
find their desired information and to carry out business with other companies
in Iran.
After implementing the recommendations on the website, it is necessary to have
another study in order to check whether the changes could meet the success factors of
a B2B website or not. This study should carry out the following:
To always keep in touch with IranDirect’s users and to get their feedback. Thus,
it is advisable to keep the feedback form at the end of the brand page.
To take the usability test for each section of the website separately. For
instance, it is vital for the website to have a usable control panel. Therefore, by
taking the usability test for the control panel, its usability rate can be known.
To generate more reports from the users’ behaviour tracking systems. Having
more visitors and more content on the website will generate more accurate
reports.
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All in all, the above studies suggest that there is a high prospect of success for this
website. The most important task in the development of IranDirect is to implement the
control panel because it helps the website to transform from being an information
website to a being a transactional one. A transactional website is a website that has
automated many of the routine interactions with its users. This enables the customers
to carry out business with companies by providing an environment for them to have a
convenient communication (Gardner, 2007). Currently, IranDirect only provides
information about different companies in classified categories and it should change to
a website which provides transactions between businesses to businesses. A control
panel feature, not only can assist the website to collect more information about the
registered companies and provide communication service but it can also enable the
website to earn money. Furthermore, it is crucial to define the types of the website’s
memberships and the price of each plan before trying to design and implement the
control panel.
To find the information required for this dissertation, the author has used online
databases, well-known books and online articles on the web. The Nielsen Jakob
usability books were found to be very helpful. As regards the collection of the required
data, although the author managed to gather sufficient data, he nevertheless, faced a
limitation caused by the lack of a large number of participants to complete the
feedback form. Notwithstanding, the objects and goals which were set out at the
outset of this dissertation have been all achieved.
Page | 97
The outcome of this research is illuminating for the developer team. When the team
implemented some of the recommendations of this dissertation, the number of
visitors increased immediately. It follows that this research has been effective as it has
produced suggestions which have improved IranDirect.
In this research, the usability test could have been carried out differently in that it
could have been taken through a piece of software which would have provided
facilities such as tracking the participants’ mouse and eye movement. However, this
approach could not be adopted as finding access to such software is difficult.
Furthermore, the author was constrained due to time limit set for this research.
Clearly, no single study can discuss all the aspects of B2B websites. Therefore, there is
a need to do further research regarding B2B websites, especially about IranDirect
website.
Further study in this topic could include the following:
Comparing IranDirect’s features with other Iranian B2B business directories.
Further investigation of the search engine optimisation.
Investigation in relation to marketing, especially e-marketing such as email
marketing for B2B websites.
Studying the behaviour of Iranian internet users. Finding out which kinds of
businesses in Iran carry out business and transactions online and the ways to
expand e-commerce in Iran.
Page | 98
Investigating the business models of B2B directories. Trying to invent
something new for them in order to generate more profit.
Word Count: 16’733
Page | 99
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Appendix 1
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