Determinants of Website Usability: Empirical Evidence from Tourism Sector in India

Abstract

Website usability has received decent empirical attention in recent academic literature. However, there are various website characteristics that might still influence the usability of websites. In this empirical exploration, we propose three such characteristics: speed with which websites respond to customer requests (i.e., website agility); the capability of websites to restore its operations in the face of a disruption (i.e., website resilience) and the capability of websites to retain the interests of customers and keep them engaged interactively (i.e., website attractiveness) as enablers of website usability based on dynamic capability extension of resource-based view. Further, we argue that website usability will influence electronic word of mouth (e-WOM) for those websites. We also explore if there is any influence of website agility and resilience on website attractiveness. Using customers as target respondents who have used websites mainly for travel and tourism purposes, we test for the proposed relationships through collecting survey data based on face-to-face interview. Partial least squares analysis of 285 survey responses suggests website agility attractiveness and resilience to be dominant enablers for website usability and website usability positively influences e-WOM.