Ali H. Al-Badi

The Enablers and Disablers of E-Commerce: Consumers’ Perspectives

The availability and continued growth of Internet technologies (IT) have created great opportunities for users all over the globe to benefit from these services and use them in a variety of different ways. The use of IT to conduct business online is known as Electronic Commerce (E‐Commerce). While developed countries have harnessed and adopted E‐Commerce, developing countries are not yet fully adapted to its adoption. The aim of this study is to investigate the main factors that play a role in the adoption of E‐Commerce from a consumers perceptive and, hence, develop a framework that conceptualises the influential factors (enablers and disablers) of E‐Commerce. A ‘grounded theory’ methodology was used to collect and analyse the data and develop the proposed framework. Thus, semi‐structured interviews were conducted with Saudi residents to elicit their opinions about E‐Commerce enablers and disablers in Saudi Arabia. The findings of the study suggest that the factors that have the most significant impact on the adoption of E‐Commerce in Saudi Arabia are security, fraud and hacking, trust, cyber‐law, awareness and perceived usefulness, postal services, government e‐readiness, resistance to change, the presence of commercial electronic websites, cost, tangibility, warranty, trial and experience.

A Framework for Designing Usable Localised Business Websites

Website localisation is the process of adapting the linguistic and cultural content of an internationalised web design for a specific target audience in a specific locale. With the advent of globalisation, website localisation is becoming a powerful way to attract online customers in a global market. Hence, the main driving force behind such moves is financial, but with a strong motivation towards cross-cultural sensitivity. The primary aim of this research therefore is to explore the design of websites for different cultures. It seeks to provide an outline of the current and relevant literature with regard to cultural usability and user interface design. It also aspires to develop and experiment with a Cultural User Interface (CUI) profile. The intention is to create a framework for designing usable localised websites. To achieve these ends, the research employs various methodologies. These include descriptive/interpretive studies of the literature and previous studies by academics and industrial institutions. Furthermore it utilises surveys and case studies among Internet users, web designers, and web production companies in the target cultures (Arab and British). In the process a website has been redesigned according to the guidelines of a newly built framework within the context of an action research approach. Finally, by comparing the original and the redesigned websites, a comparative evaluation has been carried out. The research findings contribute to the general field of software/web localisation and personalisation. They also provide academics and industry with information on the degree to which cultural localisation is needed to ensure usability. In addition, they highlight the extent to which users’ cultural background and perceptions influence their preferences and hence the acceptance of the virtual world of online user interfaces. The main findings of this research highlight the necessity to understand both the target culture and the needs of the business commissioning the website. They also show the value of design consistency (navigation, layout, interaction, graphics and colours, etc). Furthermore the researchers were able to identify a drawback in web designers’ current practices in the investigated countries, in terms of their limited utilisation of existing guidelines for the exploitation of intercultural usability, accessibility, knowledge, tools and methods.

IT disaster recovery: Oman and Cyclone Gonu lessons learned

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the issues of information technology (IT) disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity planning (BCP) in light of Cyclone Gonu in Oman.Design/methodology/approach – The paper includes a survey of the latest literature on the subject, then documents a study of public and private sector organizations together with their DR and BCP practices.Findings – The paper investigates how public and private organizations in Oman plan to respond to disasters. It shows that while some organizations pay attention to the need for DR/BCP, many do not. A significant finding is that while organizations have disaster related plans, almost half of those surveyed do not rehearse them. Nevertheless, organizations surveyed indicate that they have learned valuable lessons from Gonu. It remains to be seen whether these lessons will be turned into effective and properly deployed DR/BCP plans.Originality/value – This paper draws lessons from the experiences and challenges raised by Gonu, and con...

Improving Usability of Social Networking Systems: A Case Study of LinkedIn

Several different methods are used for assessing the usability of websites. The ‘usability’ of a website describes how competently and easily a user or visitor without any proper training can interact with the site. Nowadays, social networking systems have become a major medium for online communication, marketing, research and collaboration. Users can quickly be in touch with friends and colleagues via a social networking site. The aim of this paper is to investigate the usability of social networking systems, using expert evaluation and user testing, in order to provide recommendations for developers in the improvement of social networking in general and LinkedIn in particular, based on the difficulties (usability problems) experienced by users and experts, and also to measure the users’ performance (both novices and experienced users). In this experiment, the researchers employed two usability evaluation methods: ‘user testing’ and ‘expert evaluation’. The ‘user testing’ includes pre-test, tasks to be performed and post-test usability ratings. The ‘user testing’ is conducted using a thinkaloud protocol and observation to achieve a better understanding of the participants’ behaviours. The ‘expert evaluation’ includes pre-evaluation, actual evaluation (each of the ten Nielson’s heuristics was broken down into a set of principles forming a checklist specifically oriented for the LinkedIn website), followed by post-evaluation.

Generating a Domain Specific Inspection Evaluation Method through an Adaptive Framework

The electronic information revolution and the use of computers as an essential part of everyday life are now more widespread than ever before, as the Internet is exploited for the speedy transfer of data and business. Social networking sites (SNSs), such as LinkedIn, Ecademy and Google+ are growing in use worldwide, and they present popular business channels on the Internet. However, they need to be continuously evaluated and monitored to measure their levels of efficiency, effectiveness and user satisfaction, ultimately to improve quality. Nearly all previous studies have used Heuristic Evaluation (HE) and User Testing (UT) methodologies, which have become the accepted methods for the usability evaluation of User Interface Design (UID); however, the former is general, and unlikely to encompass all usability attributes for all website domains. The latter is expensive, time consuming and misses consistency problems. To address this need, a new evaluation method is developed using traditional evaluations (HE and UT) in novel ways. The lack of an adaptive methodological framework that can be used to generate a domain- specific evaluation method, which can then be used to improve the usability assessment process for a product in any chosen domain, represents a missing area in usability testing. This paper proposes an adaptive framework that is readily capable of adaptation to any domain, and then evaluates it by generating an evaluation method for assessing and improving the usability of products in a particular domain. The evaluation method is called Domain Specific Inspection (DSI), and it is empirically, analytically and statistically tested by applying it on three websites in the social networks domain. Our experiments show that the adaptive framework is able to build a formative and summative evaluation method that provides optimal results with regard to our newly identified set of comprehensive usability problem areas as well as relevant usability evaluation method (UEM) metrics, with minimum input in terms of the cost and time usually spent on employing traditional usability evaluation methods (UEMs).

Improving website ranking through search engine optimization

Internet is fast becoming critically important to commerce, industry and individuals. Perhaps the most important single component of this communication network is the Search Engine (SE). Successful Websites rank high in SEs hits, whereas unsuccessful Websites may not rank at all. In an effort to increase the ranking of Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) amongst international universities, it was recommended to apply “Webometrics” measures. Hence, it was necessary to enhance the universitys Website ranking. Therefore, the primary aim of this research is to explore the factors and techniques that contribute to a page ranking highly in a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). The research is divided into two parts. The first part is a descriptive/interpretive analysis aiming to provide an outline of the current and relevant literature with regard to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It covers how SEs work, and explores the guidelines that are available for Web designers to optimize Web pages, thereby increasing their visibility and ranking. Furthermore, it provides a short history of the most important SEs, differentiates between them, and reviews the approaches they use to crawl, index, and display search results. It also provides an account of the different factors/methods impacting Website ranking. The second part documents an action research project undertaken to enhance the visibility and ranking of the SQU Website. The main findings are that, for a site to rank well, it must use a combination of increasingly sophisticated techniques and tools, and not to rely on outdated methods such as Meta tags (especially the keywords). Fortunately, there are many online tools which can assist in tuning a site to work better, as well as other freely available good pieces of advice.

AL-SHIFA HEALTHCARE INFORMATION SYSTEM IN OMAN: A DEBATABLE IMPLEMENTATION SUCCESS

This paper presents a case study of the project management of Al‐Shifa healthcare information system (HIS) in Oman. In addition to the reports about the project made available to the researchers, the focus group methodology was used for collecting the relevant information from the main projects stakeholders. The paper describes first the evolution of the implementation of an HIS tailored by the Ministry of Health (MOH) in Oman to fit the needs of the healthcare units under its supervision. The case analysis that constitutes the second element in the paper is made based on the Project Management approach developed by the Project Management Institute (PMI). As a matter of fact, the authors found that there was no formal project management approach adopted by the MOH for the development and implementation of the hereto‐mentioned HIS project. Moreover, the project has experienced a chronic creep in terms of features, cost and time‐schedule. The recommendations of the authors for the rescue of the project from its current dilemma, consist of technological, administrative and human resource development actions.

Exploratory Study of M-Transaction: User’s Perspectives

Both the recent advances in mobile technologies and the high penetration rate of mobile communication services have had a profound impact on our daily lives, and are beginning to offer interesting and advantageous new services. In particular, the mobile transaction (mtransaction) system has emerged, enabling users to pay for physical and digital goods and services using their mobile devices whenever they want and wherever they are. It is anticipated that M‐transaction will enjoy a bright future. However, apparently there is still a lack of acceptance of mobile transaction amongst users. This paper empirically investigates what are the factors that make the mobile subscribers reluctant, and which factors that make them keen to accept m‐transaction. This study applies a modified model of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and use of Technology (UTAUT), a robust well‐known model, as an approach to collect and analyse the data and, therefore, to develop a categorization of the important factors that play a role in accepting and using M‐transaction. Following a qualitative method, semi‐structured interviews were conducted with Saudi residents to elicit their opinions and concerns about using m‐transaction in Saudi Arabia. The findings of this study show that the factors that have the most significant influence on the acceptance and use of m‐transaction in Saudi Arabia are: usability, usefulness, telecommunications infrastructure, security, hacking and fraud, availability, trust, payment gateway, awareness, cost and promotion, privacy, cyber‐law, the postal services, government e‐readiness, Arabic language support.

A Road Map to Risk Management Framework for Successful Implementation of Cloud Computing in Oman

Cloud computing nowadays is adopted by many organizations around the world because of its potential benefits such as cost reduction, high availability and elastic scaling. In spite of all the claimed benefits and to deal with any potential risk and vulnerability of cloud computing, risk management is becoming a critical domain that requires a fundamental review in the business strategies and can be linked to cloud computing, in order to have a successful cloud implementation. Risk management can help in avoiding, transferring, mitigating or minimizing the risks associated with being on the cloud. The main objective of this research is to explore the existing risk management frameworks in order to recommend an appropriate risk management framework for cloud computing environment. Qualitative data were collected and analyzed based on interviews conducted amongst the information technology and risk management professionals in Omani organizations (public and private). The recommended framework can be used in conjunction with other risk management approaches for industries which already moved to cloud or in transition of moving towards cloud environment in Oman.

The role of employees’ empowerment as an intermediary variable between knowledge management and information systems on employees’ performance

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the interrelationships among knowledge management (KM), information systems (IS) and employees’ empowerment (EE) on employees’ performance (EP).,Accordingly, a structural model is developed that delineates the interactions among these constructs and explores the mediating effect of EE on the relationship between KM, IS and EP. A questionnaire-based survey was designed to test the aforementioned model based on dataset of 287 employees’ pharmaceutical industries in Jordan. The model and posited hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling analysis.,The results indicated that KM and IS positively and significantly affect EE, in which the latter impact EP as well. However, neither KM nor IS proved to be positively related to EP. Additionally, EE positively and significantly mediated the relationship between KM and EP, besides the relationship between IS and EP.,This is one of the few studies which investigate the interrelationships among KM, IS and EE on EP, and the first to test the model on companies in the pharmaceutical industries in Jordan.