Effects On Business

            The lack of optimal usability was hardly confined to a few unprofessional sites.  Market researcher Forrester  Research and Bradford, Massachusetts-based usability testing firm User Interface Engineering conducted a study in 2000 that found serious usability  flaws on thirty leading e-commerce sites, including e-tailing giant Amazon.com Forrester Research reported that 27 percent of all Web transactions were abandoned when users reached the payment Web page, While BizRate.com found that fully 75 percent of the respondents to their survey said they had abandoned their online shopping carts with-out completing a purchase.  The main culprit for these lost revenue opportunities was a lack of usability on the Web site.  According to a study Redwood, California-based Zona research, U.S Web sites lost an estimated $25billion in revenue due to slow Web site performance alone.

            With such enormous sums at stake, companies were taking few chances.  By the early 2000s e-commerce firms were increasingly turning to consultants who specialize in Web site usability issues.  In the process they helped foster a hot site-testing industry.  Particularly in the wake of the e-commerce shakeout of the 2000’s e-tailers sought  to utilize their web sites to generate as much revenue as possible, and thus could ill afford to lose customers doe to easily avoidable flaws in their design.