Open Access

Maria-Aurora Cuzma

• The development of the information society, the increase in the number of users make the transmission of information more diverse but also attractive as possible and easier to use. Under these circumstances, public or private institutions choose to synthesize and share information through the web sites. More, online shops are nowadays very popular and used because people want to save time, money and flexibility of payment methods. Recognizing the importance of software products quality has led to key changes in the behavior of software producers by their focus on delivering solutions to ensure client satisfaction. In order to develop software products with a high level of quality and client satisfaction, software developers have adopted best practices and standards for quality management in the software product life cycle. The results of numerous European projects as well as international quality standards have been and are still being adopted and capitalized through quality improvement programs. To analyze and compare the quality of web sites to see if they meet the users’ requirements are proposing to develop a methodology based on the procedures and algorithms used in the method EWAM - The Extended Web Assessment Method, a methodology that will end with a series of recommendations on designing or implementing web sites. The method responds to a major problem related to the evaluation of ecommerce applications: which are the most relevant criteria to ensure the success of an e-commerce system. EWAM is a complex method that was created for a detailed analysis of a sample of applications and websites in a particular sector. In this respect, the method is not intended for the mass evaluation of websites. The EWAM method uses the specific “profile” concept. This is a reference against which the results from evaluating an e-commerce application are compared. One of such profiles have been defined “Best practice” profile – which means a set of methods, techniques, procedures, etc. demonstrated and proven to be the best in current practice and used in the provision of e-commerce services. The evaluation criteria are formulated in general terms and are valid for any sector, but they are differentiated by the sector-specific importance. In this way, the conditions for identifying the reference sector and benchmarking of different e-commerce applications are created both within a sector and between different sectors. The establishment of (referential) “profiles” allows the comparison of the quality of an e-commerce application with the average quality of a given sector, and, at the same time, the comparison with the best practices used in the sector. The focus lies on consumer perspectives and the specific features of the Internet as a medium. Using the EWAM tool, an analysis of four commercial Web sites in the same business sectors – fashion but in two different countries, will be performed: the websites as Orsay (www.orsay.com), Zara (www.zara.com), H&M (www.hm.com) and Mango (www.mango.com). The results will be per country compared. Furthermore, the work analyses the conceptual elements such as quality models, software product quality in general and the methodology to prove the web sites quality as well - The Extended Web Assessment Method. The empirical section based on The Extended Web Assessment Method examines and evaluate the online shops of Orsay, Zara, H&M and Mango websites based on interviewing people from Austria and Romania. Web assessment is a very ambitious and labor-intense work. The assessors should meet certain criteria: • They need to understand the criteria of the Web assessment form very well, hence they must undergo a thorough instruction • They must be experienced Web users • They must take the time to go through all four transaction phases for each Web sites assessed (including delivery and payment!) The objectives of experimenting with the EWAM method are: • verifying and validating website evaluation criteria specified in the EWAM method; • verifying the applicability of the method for measuring and evaluating websites in the field of fashion e-commerce in Romania and Austria - its comparing; • formulating new criteria on the evaluation of websites, in general, and of fashion e-commerce websites, using results comparison from two European countries – Austria (central Europe) and Romania (eastern Europe) Additionally, a set of questions will be performed to find if e-commerce systems, especially B2C systems in fashion sector, operate in selected target countries as well as it does in its home country, across geographic boundaries. Does the site respect cultural differences between the home and foreign country? Which are the particularly needs to for fashion e-commerce websites? Are the user needs changed due modern technology – use they nowadays more web or apps? The answers will conclude if the ‘best practices’ profiles can be extended with new criteria on evaluation of fashion e-commerce websites due modern technology and internationalization/globalization.