Efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction of responsive mobile tourism websites: a mobile usability study

Abstract

Considering the high penetration of internet-enabled smartphones, it is not surprising that DMOs feel the need to adapt their websites and services for mobile devices, although these adaptations are very cost intensive. Responsive web design (RWD) offers an efficient and practicable solution to address the plethora of different mobile devices with countless varying characteristics (scree-size, input, size, etc.). Moreover, the lack of evidence about the effects of websites employing RWD on mobile usability, as well as tourism information search behavior, raises questions both to practitioners and researchers. With this paper we investigate the efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction when searching for and encountering tourism information on a smartphone on a responsive mobile tourism website compared to a mobile adaptive website. Through an experiment, 20 participants interacted with two representative websites and fulfilled specific information retrieval tasks. Effects between both websites could be derived, although differences were not consistently significant, and well-applied heuristics failed to measure user behavior systematically. Overall the responsively designed website performed better but failed to distinguish itself in terms of satisfaction and perceived usability.