Full Paper ACEEE Int. J. on Information Technology , Vol. 3, No.

3, Sept 2013

A Fuzzy Expert System for Assessing the InternetStores Based on Web Site Attributes
Mahdieh Khalilinezhad1, Ahmad Nadali*2, NiloufarDehghani3, Mohammad Ghazivakili4
Department of Computer Engineering, University of Qom,Qom, Iran Email: A.khalilinezhad@gmail.com 2 Department of Information Technology Management, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran *Corresponding Author Email: Nadali.ahmad@gmail.com 3 Department of Economics, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran Email:Niloofar.dehghani68@gmail.com 4 Department of Telecommunications, Urmia Branch, Islamic Azad University, Urmia, Iran Email: M.ghazivakili@gmail.com
AbstractPurpose of this research is determining the success of online shopping stores by an intelligent system. Here a Fuzzy Expert System has been designed with the consideration of website attributes as input variables. The web site success level is determined in this system as output. The rules of systems have been extracted from some ecommerce experts and the systems have been developed with the use of FIS tool of MATLAB software. The final result contains an anticipating model for evaluating level of web site success of shopping centers based on website factors situation. The presented steps have been run in four online bookstores as the empirical study. Index Terms- E-commerce, Internet Stores, Websites Attributes, Web site Assessment, Fuzzy Expert System.
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focuses on designing an Expert System for evaluating success level of online shopping centers as Output based on criteria of websites as Input variables. Since the experts judgment isexplained with linguistic variables, using fuzzy functions and Fuzzy deduction system can be advantageous to build a knowledge base system for evaluating platforms new ideas. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: In the next Section the concept of web evaluation is defined and criteria and methods of website assessment are highlighted. Methodology of Fuzzy Expert System is given in Section 3. In Section 4 the proposed system & empirical study are described. In Section 5 the results and discussion are presented. Finally the article conclusions are drawn in Section 6. II. THE LITERATURE REVIEW ON WEBSITE EVALUATION A. The criteria of website evaluation As the dependency on web services increases, the need to assess characteristics with website quality and success increases. Websites characteristics are important; they have been a constant concern of research in different domains and they were widely studied in the e-commerce literature [2]. Website evaluation measures have been proposed in various contexts in recent years; researchers in this area struggle to determine important factors for evaluating online service and marketing.Business and commercial websites were studied from different perspectives. Some researchers investigated website features or factors that are critical to ebusiness success, in which they called them critical success factors [2]. In the context of e-commerce, [3] proposed an updated DeLone and McLean information system (IS) success model (henceforth referred to as the Delone and McLean model) and argued that website success is a multi-dimensional concept consisting of six interrelated variables system quality, information quality, service quality, user satisfaction, system use, and net benefits. In that article taxonomy, system quality measures technical success, information quality measures semantic success, service quality measures customer service success, and user satisfaction, system use and net benefits are the measures of website effectiveness. Within Delone&MCLean model, system quality, information 56

I. INTRODUCTION In the last ten years, online shopping has become a prevalent part of the average consumer s shopping experience. The consumer now has the ability to purchase virtually anything online; ranging from small ticket items such as a rubber-band ball to big-ticket items like vacation homes. With this increase in theonline consumers purchasing power and propensity to purchase online, retailers have become increasingly willing to develop their e-commerce presence [1] Moreover, the explosion of the web has determined the need of measurement criteria to evaluate the aspects related to the quality in use, such as usability and accessibility of a web application. The objective is to make a website useful, profitable, and accessible [2]. Awareness of quality issues has recently affected every industrial sector. An organization with a website that is difficult to use and interact with gives a poor image on the Internet and weakness of an organizations position. Therefore, it is important for any organization to have the ability to make an assessment of the quality of their e-business websites and services. In the last decade, numerous studies have focused on the designs of websites because the design of website is very critical to ebusiness success. Numerous practitioner reports and reviews have been published seeking to identify the good and bad features of websites. The purpose of this paper is to assess ecommerce websites based on web related attributes. This article mainly 2013 ACEEE DOI: 01.IJIT.3.3.1143

Full Paper ACEEE Int. J. on Information Technology , Vol. 3, No. 3, Sept 2013 quality, and service quality affect user satisfaction and system use, which in turn are direct antecedents of net benefits [4]. Other researchers address key issues, ideas and strategies to be considered in the management of online business from customer satisfaction perspective, and they assess whether a website has been built with a customers goals in mind. Another group of researchers investigated the perspective of web designers in order to elicit factors that they consider important when designing or developing effective websites [2]. Other researchers developed generic tools or measurement frameworks for the assessment of website quality[5], There are many articles reviewed by authors concentrated on some important features; they either proposed a framework to measure the important features of the website or used previous models to find out to which extent e-business websites incorporate these important features. [4] Closely linked to the concept of website quality is the notion of usability. For the customer to easily consume online, he/she must first find website useful and easy to use. Website usability has been defined and measured in many different ways in the table1 we categorized previous research about usability. TABLE I. PREVIOUS RESEARCH ABOUT WEBSITE USABILITY
Authors
Agrwal&Vente sh(2002)[6]

the many attempts have been made to address website evaluation for different organizational sectors and website categories [4]. In this part we categorized previous research based on the evaluation methods and different aspect of ebusiness. Various assessment techniques have been employed to evaluate websites using subjective approaches based on individual preferences, such as the Analytic HierarchyProcess (AHP), the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), the Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluation (PROMETHEE), and the VIKOR [4]. Table 2.show the previous researches based on the different aspect of e-business. TABLE II. CATEGORIZATION OF STUDIES BASED ON WEBSITE EVALUATION METHODS AND E-BUSINESS
Website Types
Academic Website

Authors
Bu yukozkan et all, (2007)[11]

Methods
Fuzzy VIKOR

Evaluation Criteria
Right and understa ndable content, complete content, personalization, security, naviga tion, interactivity and user interface. Accessibility, spe ed, navigability and content. User satisfaction perspective.

Description
Defined usa bility based on design elements Extended information system design principles for web Categorized usability into different aspect

Evaluation Criteria
Download delay, navigability, content, interactivity, responsiveness Navigation, response time, credibility, content Language usability, layout and graphics, information architecture usability, user interface and navigation, ge neral usability Consistency ,accessibility, navigation, media use interactivity, content Information content, ease of navigation, download delay, website availability
Banking Website Miranda, Corts, &Bar riuso, (2006) [12] Bu yukozkan& Ruan, (2008)[13] Buyukozkan &Cifci(201 2)[14] Web Assessment Index Fuzzy AHP and Fuzzy TOPSIS Fuzzy AHP and Fuzzy TOPSIS

Nilsen (2000)[7] Bai,Law,Wen (2008)[8]

Gover nment al Website

Healthcare Website

Hassan and Li (2005)[9]

Identified web usability as screen appearance Influence factor on website usability

Travel Website

Ho and Lee, (2007)[15]

Factor Ana lysis

Tarafdar and Zhang (2005)[10]

E-commerce Website

The fact that e-commerce itself can be classified as a kind of information technology dimension and that many business activities are done through the computer and Internet, including product transactions, advertising, selling services, etc., reveals the core issue of how Internet businesses can make themselves the customers most trusted and shopped websites. Shopping websites allow customers to choose products based on their own needs and then provide businesses transaction platforms through interactive communications to fulfill the transactions. Previous studies have emphasized that the issue of consumer purchase process is important. B. The methods of website evaluation Drawing a Strategy Canvas for business industry is 2013 ACEEE DOI: 01.IJIT.3.3.1143 57

Kuo, Chi, and Kao, (2002)[16] Vander, M er we&Be kker, (2003)[17]

Fuzzy AHP and ANN Conceptual Fr ame work

Tangibles, responsiveness, r eliability, information quality, assurance and empathy. Information quality, Secur ity, website functionality, customer r elationships and responsiveness. Design and content, customer education, security, Interface, Navigation, Reliability, Content, Technical.

III. FUZZY EXPERT SYSTEM METHODOLOGY Fuzzy expert systems use fuzzy data, fuzzy rules and fuzzy inference, in addition to the standard ones implemented in the ordinary expert systems. The fuzzy Inference Systems (FIS) are very good tools as they hold the nonlinear universal approximation [18]. Fuzzy inference systems can express human expert knowledge and experience by using fuzzy inference rules represented in if-then statements. Following the fuzzy inference mechanism, the output can be a fuzzy set or a precise set of certain features. Fuzzy expert systems deal

Full Paper ACEEE Int. J. on Information Technology , Vol. 3, No. 3, Sept 2013 with phenomena that are uncertain and nonlinear in nature. The nonlinear characteristics are realized in fuzzy logic by partitioning the domain-specific rule space, weighting the rules, and applying the nonlinear membership functions [19]. Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) incorporates fuzzy inference and rule-based expert systems. There are different types of fuzzy systems are introduced. Mamdani fuzzy systems and TSK fuzzy systems are two types of fuzzy systems commonly used in literature that has different ways of knowledge representation.TSK (Takagi-Sugeno-Kang) fuzzy system was proposed in an effort to develop a systematic approach to generate fuzzy rules from a given inputoutput data set. Regarding our problem in which various possible conditions of parameters are stated in form of fuzzy sets, the Mamdani fuzzy systems will be utilized due to the fact that the fuzzy rules representing the expert knowledge in Mamdani fuzzy systems, take advantage of fuzzy sets in their consequences, while in TSK fuzzy systems, the consequences are expressed in form of a crisp function [20]. The general process of constructing such a fuzzy expert system from initial model design to system evaluation is shown in Fig.1. This illustrates the typical process flow as distinct stages for clarity but in reality the process is not usually composed of such separate discrete steps and many of the stages, although present, are blurred into each other. Step3) Determining the membership functions for the variables Step4) Specifying the rules for making the relations clear between Inputs and outputs by experts. Step5) Developing the Fuzzy Expert System via FIS Tool in MATLAB Software. Step6) Implementing the designed system for four online book store websites. Step1: The aim is evaluating the success level of online shopping websites considering to 5 main website factors status. Since the obtained opinions from the experts about factors are ambiguous and not precise; evaluation has been done via linguistic variables. To this purpose, a Mamdanis Fuzzy Expert system has been designed. Step2: According to above mentioned steps, the effective variables on website success level have been extracted from the previous research of Vander, R., Merwe, Bekker, J [17] as Input variables (Table3). These input variables include: Interface, Navigation, Reliability, Content, Technical as main effective factors that are shown in table 4. Website Success Level(WSL) has been considered as output of a Mamdanis Fuzzy Expert system. TABLE III. DESCRIPTION OF E-COMMERCE WEB SITE EVALUATION CRITERIA [17]

Website Attributes

Sub Criteria
Graphic design principles, Graphics and multimedia, Style and text, Flexibility and compatibility Logical structure, Ease of use, Search engine, Navigational necessities Product/service-related information, Company and contact information, Information quality, Interactivity Stored customer profile, Order process, After-order to order receipt, Customer service Speed, Security, Software and database, System design

Interface (C1) Navigation (C2) Reliability (C3) Content (C4) Technical(C5)

Step3: In this system, five main factors have been considered as Inputs and Website Success Level(WSL) as output. The membership functions of Inputs and Output of designed fuzzy expert system have been presented in Tables 4&5. TABLE IV. THE OUTPUT OF FUZZY EXPERT SYSTEM
Fig. 1. Process flow in constructing a fuzzy expert system [20]

Output

Interval

IV. THE PROPOSED FUZZY EXPERT SYSTEM In the following section, the circumstance of designing the fuzzy expert systems for determining Website Success Level has been described in six steps. In this research, these steps briefly have been followed: Step1) Clarifying the objective Step2) Selecting the Input and output variables with the use of previous studies 2013 ACEEE DOI: 01.IJIT.3.3.1143 58

W ebsite Success Level (W SL)

[0 1]

Type of membershi p function P-shape

Linguistic terms

Very Low(VL), Low(L), Medium(M), High(H), Very High(VH)

After specifying Input and Output variables, membership functions by the experts have been defined for the variables which are shown in Fig 2 to Fig 7.

Full Paper ACEEE Int. J. on Information Technology , Vol. 3, No. 3, Sept 2013 TABLE V. THE INPUTS OF FUZZY EXPERT SYSTEM
Inputs Interval Type of me mbershi p function Ga ussian2 Gbell Gbell Gaussian Gaussian Linguistic terms Very Low(VL), Low(L), M edium(M), High(H), Very High(VH) Low(L) , Medium(M) High(H) Very Low(VL), Low(L), M edium(M), High(H), Very High(VH Low(L) , Medium(M) High(H) Very Low(VL), Low(L), M edium(M), High(H), Very High(VH

Inter fa ce Navigation Reliability Content Technical

[0 1] [0 1] [0 1] [0 1] [0 1]

Fig.5. Three Gaussian2 Membership function for Content

Fig.6. Five Gaussian Membership function for Technical

Fig.2. Five Gaussian2 Membership function for Interface

Fig.7. Five P-shape Membership function for Website Success Level (WSL) Fig.3. Three Gbell Membership function for Navigation TABLE VI. T HE
RULES OF

FUZZY EXPERT SYSTEM

C1

C2

C3

C4

C5

WSL

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Fig.4. Five Gbell Membership function for Reliability

VH M L H M VL H VH VL M

M H M M H M L L H H

H M L VH VL H H H M H

H L M H M L M H L H

H M VL M H M VL M H VH

VH M VL H M L L H VL VH

Step4: To design the systems, we needed the rules which determine the relation between the input and output variables.The 15 obtained rules can be viewed in Table 6. 2013 ACEEE DOI: 01.IJIT.3.3.1143 59

Step5: The system according to the obtained rules from experts about the relationbetween Input variables and Output has been designed via MATLAB software. Here, Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) in MATLAB fuzzy logic toolbox as

Full Paper ACEEE Int. J. on Information Technology , Vol. 3, No. 3, Sept 2013 user friendly interface has been used. Step6: The system is able to determine the website success level based on the five effective website attributes. Regarding the proposed fuzzy expert system, four E-commerce websites have been evaluated as empirical study, as shown in next section. V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The final objective of this study was to present a Fuzzy Expert system to evaluate the website success level for any E-commerce website. According to the experts opinions as the inputs, we applied it for 4 online shopping stores and the following results have been presented (Fig 8 to Fig11).

Fig 11: The assessed success Level of Website 4 by designed system

As a result, website success level (WSL) of Website 1 would be 0.667 out of 1 , for Website 2 would be 0.806 out of 1, for Website 3 would be 0.524 out of 1 and for Website 4 would be 0.709 out of 1. These results show that website 2 is best online shopping and website 4 is better than website 1 and website 3 is worst. Finally, website 2 is successful for attracting audiences only based on its website good attributes. VI.CONCLUSION In this article we have tried to review previous studies related to features of good websites specially e-shopping websites and then it has been investigated different methods that are used for evaluating web site quality in different aspect of e-business website such as: e-learning, e-banking, egovernment, e-travel, e-commerce, e-shopping and healthcare websites. In this study website success level for online shopping stores has been evaluated according to five website factors. Here, the effective variables on websites have been considered as the system inputs and the website success level as the system output. The rules have been obtained by the use of E-commerce experts opinions. According to these rules, a Fuzzy expert system has been designed. This model helps to rank the shopping websites and it can be used for assessing websites in other areas. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Fig 9: The assessed success Level of Website 2 by designed system

Fig 8: The assessed success Level of Website 1 by designed system

Here, we appreciate from the WBB Team experts who havegiventheirknowledgetotheresearchersandsupported this research. REFERENCES
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Fig 10: The assessed success Level of Website 3 by designed system

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