Web sites for e-banking: a study of Web sites performance in Malaysia.

• Author: Goi, Chai Lee

1. INTRODUCTION

   Consumers are demanding more world-class standards in everything from transportation to logistics, infrastructure to finance (See, 2003). To solve this problem, banks started to transform the business to clicks-and-mortar, but at the same time, bricks-and-mortar business still remained. Domestic banking institutions are allowed to establish communicative or transactional Web sites with effect from June 1, 2000. Even all these banks have their own Web site, but only few of banks actively offer Internet banking to their consumer (see Table 1). Refer to Ho's model (1997) (promotion, provision and processing), the level of these Web sites at least at promotion and provision level. Based on Ho's model (1997), Cooper and Burgess (2000) highlighted that Stage 1 cover promotion; Stage 2 is provision, which covers technical information, FAQ, email, online enquiry, value-added links and information; and Stage 3 is processing, which covers online payments, online order, online sales, online status, links and enquiry.

   Slow Web sites and difficult navigation are the most popular complaints of Web users (http://www.websiteoptimization.com, 2006). Important criteria to support navigation are fast downloads; consistent and predictable interfaces; text-based navigation; and broad, shallow tree structures for information architecture (Lazar et. al, 2003). Even, the study found that Web browsing is the most frustrating experience people have with computers, with dropped connections and slow downloads topping the list. The time lost due to frustrating experiences ranged from 47% to 53% of the time spent on computers (Ceaparu et. al, 2002). Although the Web doubles its delivery speed every two years, the amount of traffic on the Net also doubles in a similar time period (Dembeck, 1999; Nua, 1999; Destounis et al., 2001; Ryan and Valverde, 2003). This places ever increasing demands on Web servers (Kothari and Claypool, 2001; Ryan and Valverde, 2003) while Web users are generally reluctant to upgrade their connection speed (Weinberg, 2000; Ryan and Valverde, 2003). The delays on the Internet are likely to get longer before they eventually get shorter (Bhatti et al., 2000; Nielsen, 1999; Nua, 2001; Dunlop and Johnson, 1998; Rose, 2000; Ryan and Valverde, 2003). The surfers want Web sites are quick to load and easy to use. Many people log off and never return if a site takes more than eight seconds to load (Strategic Direction, 2005).

   Web site performance and analysis is a crucial factor in determining today's online business's success. When testing for performance, one has to stimulate a large number of users using the Web site simultaneously. On the other hand, analysis testing helps us keep track of the rapid pace of changing Web sites. In Web site development, there is no prescribed standard particularly in creating Web site in Malaysia. "Literature on Web theory is scant, for two reasons. First, it is an emerging area and many people are simply finding their way for the first time. Second, those who are at the forefront of the Web, the design technologists are not typically inclined to sit back, reflect on their practice, source relevant theory and write about it". This situation is a challenge to Web developers to create a good Web site. Good quality of Web site design is not only based on the developer's perception, but also the customer acceptance and perception. Based on the customers' perception, "quality is whatever the customer says it is" (Day, 1997).

2. OBJECTIVES

   The main objectives of this research are to study the performance and speed of local commercial banks' Web site in Malaysia. This research study provides a justification of the performance of Web site, especially in download times. The study also tries to identify what are the problems of the Web sites. The research results contribute towards the development of comprehensive and effective Web site acceptable usage for organisations that use the Web site especially for E-banking.

3. LITERATURE REVIEW

   The factors that will influence the usefulness, enjoyment and ease-of-use of the Web sites (Van der Heijden, 2003; Moss et. al, 2006) and satisfaction (Van Iwaarden et. al, 2004; Moss et. al. 2006) has led Human Computer Interaction (HCI) researchers to attempt to understand the elements (technical, visual and content) in web design that are valued (Schenkman and Jonsson, 2000; Moss et. al, 2006) and those that currently produce a deficit between expectations and experience (Moss et. al, 2006). Quality factors determined Web site success (Zhang and von Dran, 2001) and successful Web site strategy has been acknowledged to be increasingly important to organisations (Liao et. al, 2006). The research concluded that certain quality factors such as navigation and information accuracy were regarded as highly important to user expectations. Web site success is significantly associated with some constructs including download delay, navigation, content, interactivity, and responsiveness (Palmer, 2002).

   Designers tend to forget that most visitors to their sites still use low modem connections and may not be able to support animations (Foremski, 2000). Customers use the Internet because it is fast and putting large graphics onto Web pages slows down access to the page and will probably frustrate the customer into abandoning the site (Cox and Dale, 2002). Waiting on the Internet has been referred to in a number of ways: download time, download delay, Internet latency, world wide wait and Internet speed (Ryan and Valverde, 2003). Rose and Straub (2001) define download time as "the time it takes for a Web client to fully receive, process and display files submitted by a Web server once those files are requested". A number of factors have been identified that affect how long users are willing to wait for a Web page to download (Ryan and Valverde, 2003).

   * The online experience of the user.

   * The time online in one single session (cumulative session time).

   * Economic factors.

   * Attitude to delay.

   * The position of the wait.

   * Users' expectations' of delay.

   * Expected quality of the Web site.

   * The type of task.

   * Uncertainty and information about the wait.

   It is widely accepted in the literature that there is an objective limit or maximum tolerance in terms of how long users are willing to wait for a Web page to download before they will decide to give up and click on another Web page or disconnect from the Internet between 8 and 28 seconds (Ryan and Valverde, 2003).

   * 10 seconds (Nielsen, 1996, 1999).

   * 10 seconds (Lynch and Horton, 1997).

   * 28 seconds (Tedeschi, 1999).

   * 8 seconds (Accounting Web, 2000).

   Many experiments have been based on simulations of Web pages with controlled levels of download time in order to measure maximum tolerance levels (Ryan and Valverde, 2003).

   * 8.57 seconds (Bhatti et al., 2000).

   * 10 seconds (Selvidge, 1999).

   Three major findings from usability studies were identified by Nielsen (1995).

   * People have very little patience for poorly designed WWW sites.

   * Users don't want to scroll: information that is not on the top screen when a page comes up is only read by very interested users.

   * Users don't want to read: reading speeds are more than 25% slower from computer screens than from paper, but that does not mean that we should write 25% less than we would in a paper document. Web developer should write 50% less. Users recklessly skip over any text that they deem to be fluff, e.g. welcome messages or introductory paragraphs and scan for highlighted terms, e.g. hypertext links.

   The quality of Web sites depends on factors in three categories: task; performance; and development. Task-related factors include presentation quality, content and function adequacy, and navigability. Performance-related factors include response time, transaction throughput, reliability, and robustness. Development-related factors include code complexity, code readability, code flexibility, portability, page coupling, and modifiability (Kim, Shaw and Schneider, 2003). User satisfaction with Web sites directly impacted their choice of Web sites and that users are most concerned with information content and ease of use. Kim, Shaw and Schneider (2003) identified six criteria of Web site evaluation by integrating the criteria used: business function; corporation credibility; contents reliability; Web site attractiveness; systematic structure; and navigation. Many elements of design and graphic art can be used to convey content on the Web. Elements of space, use of images, size of images, use of animation and/or audio, number of words per line, colour and size of characters are among just a few of these factors (Rosen and Purinton, 2004).

4. RESEARCH METHODS

   The analysis of this study is based on free Web site performance tool and Web page speed analysis online, Web Page Analyser 0.961 (Website Optimization--http://www.websiteoptimization.com). Online evaluation tool will be used to study Web site speed test and to improve Web site performance. The study also analyses ten local commercial banks' Web site in Malaysia (see Table 1). With this online tool, each of the Web sites will be diagnosed, which covers page size, composition, and download time. The script calculates the size of individual elements and sums up each type of Web page component. Based on these page characteristics the script then offers advice on how to improve...