Forth International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Information Systems March 19-22, 2009, Cairo, Egypt
Ranking Web Portals Quality Criteria Based on Different Types of Personality Khalid A. Eldrandaly
Mai M. Shouman
Mohamed G. Abou-Ali
Assistant Professor of IS Faculty of Computers and Informatics
Teaching Assistant
Professor of Industrial Eng.
Faculty of Computers and Informatics
Faculty of Engineering Alexandria University, Egypt.
Zagazig University, Egypt.
Zagazig University, Egypt
Tel: 0020123188223
Tel: 0020165634956
Tel: 0020110510665
B.Pox. Alexandria 21544-Egypt
[email protected]
[email protected] customization, easy of integration, performance, expandability, pricing licensing terms [7]. The web portal success can be achieved through providing easier and more efficient way for every user to carry out the needed service, improving productivity by increasing the speed and customizing information content, implementing authentication, authorization, security, and messaging, providing instant access to information, providing easily accessible information for every facet [3].
Abstract: Evaluation of web portals is an important topic in web engineering. The satisfaction of users is a primary goal for actors involved with the development and operation of a web portal. Different users can not be treated as the same because people have different drives, abilities, and personalities. There are four basic types of personality (temperaments): Choleric, Sanguine, Melancholy, and Phlegmatic. Each person has one master type of personality, however the other characteristics of other personalities can also be present but with lower effect. This paper aims to provide an integrated framework for web portals evaluation criteria and to rank the different web portals quality criteria based on the different types of personality.
Different users can not be treated as the same because people have different drives, abilities, and personalities [14]. There are four basic types of personality (temperaments): Choleric, Sanguine, Melancholy, and Phlegmatic [11]. Each person has one master type of personality, however the other characteristics of other personalities can also be present but with lower effect [6].
Keywords
This paper has two main objectives. The first one is presenting an integrated framework for web portals evaluation criteria, and the second one is ranking these evaluation criteria based on the type of personality of the user.
E-business, web portal criteria, personalization, user satisfaction.
1. Introduction The internet is one of the technologies that have great effect on the way people, businesses and organizations perform their work. The e-business is the conduction of automated business transactions by means of end-to-end electronic communications networks [12]. The application of e-business have many benefits, which involve improved operational efficiency, providing competitive advantage, penetration into new market, improved communications and relationship with suppliers and customers, increased number of new customers, and enhancing customer services[12,14 ,2]. There are many challenges and barriers to the application of e-business in any company. These challenges involve initial cost, trained personnel, lack access to high-speed Internet, security of information via the Internet, intellectual property, technological and legal issues, web portal content, and web portal design [12,20]. E-business portal is considered a critical challenge facing the application of e-business. It is one of the most critical factors facing the application of e-business as it the interface or the window through which the user can interact with the business and without a well designed web portal the ebusiness will surely fail [18].
2-Web portals Web portals are an emerging topic of Web Technologies, attracting the attention of both the industry and the research community. One of the most recent definitions of the term web portal is a gate, a door, or entrance. In the context of the World Wide Web, it is the next logical step in the evolution toward a digital culture [8]. The web portals provide a single point of access to information and/or a single point of information interchange [9].
2.1-Web portals evaluation criteria Evaluation of web portals is an important issue in web engineering, taking into consideration the Internet explosion, and the exponential growth of web sites and online information sources [17].There are many practical benefits of web evaluation, which involves Improving layout, better matching the Web site to its intended audience, assessing the need for new or modified features and functions, identifying user groups, and evaluating the impact of promotional activities on Web site usage, and comparing Web site usage and impact against agency mission and performance goals [21].
Portal companies attempt to lock in users by adding new features to their portals. Even Google, after years of sticking to a simple search offering, is now offering free email. E-business web portals are becoming key components of a company’s success to compete globally[18]. There are some measurable portal characteristics for setting up a good portal system. These characteristics involve easy of use, maintainability, potential personalization, easy of
Researchers and practitioners put substantial effort in identifying factors affecting e-business success. For example, Ramos [16] divided the portal evaluation criteria to technical and business criteria. The technical criteria are portal framework, services for 392
Forth International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Information Systems March 19-22, 2009, Cairo, Egypt
web portal evaluation and development. Detailed descriptions of these criteria can be found elsewhere [17, 16, 19, 5, 15, 10]
administrating framework and users, content/ information aggregation and management, application integration and management, collaboration and communities, and enterprise-class infrastructure. The business criteria are vendor execution market, economic impact, and solution delivery. Van der Heijden [19] investigated the usefulness, enjoyment, ease-of-use, and the attractiveness of a web portal as criteria for influencing the use of web portals. The results showed that these factors have a positive impact on the use of web portals. De Marsico et al. [4] divided the web portals evaluation criteria into information representation and appearance, access, navigation, orientation, and information content architecture. Sampson et al. [17] defined four main user satisfaction criteria for evaluating web portals. These criteria include the web portal content (in terms of contained information or access to external information resources), the web portal design (in terms of providing users with a pleasant, usable and stable environment), web portal personalization capabilities (in terms of serving users’ specific preferences and needs), and the web portal community support (in terms of the degree of satisfaction from communication and collaboration). Wang [22] stated that the critical factors for designing a successful portal are portal contents, portal security, portal reusability of resources, portal software design, portal management and programming test. Kim et al. [5] found a vital importance of user satisfaction to service continuation and reuse. They found that the portal should try to increase the switching cost and decrease the availability of attractive alternatives by increasing its services to decrease the user intention to switch to competitive portals. Kumara et al. [15] investigated user interface features influencing overall ease of use and personalization. They stated that effective user interface design has been recognized as a critical success factor for Web portals, including on-line shopping support.
3. Types of personality The Greek physician and philosopher Hypocrites was the first one recognized the behavior styles[6]. He identified four basic types of personality (temperaments) and called them Choleric, Sanguine, Melancholy, and Phlegmatic. Each person has one master type of personality, however the other characteristics of other personalities can be also present but with lower effect [6].
3.1. Powerful Choleric (Driver) Powerful Cholerics are those people who are born leaders [11]. Choleric have high expectations of themselves and others. They make quick decisions, are self-reliant, are usually comfortable taking risks, and are results oriented. However, these leaders can also be competitive, determined, have lower active listening skills and can crave power, use goals and always deal with the fact, not the person [6]. The choleric personality likes to be in charge, likes to boss people around. The choleric is motivated by a desire for power and control [11]. The DRIVER characteristics are being task oriented rather than people oriented, being decisive and determined, can control their emotions, set on efficiency and effectiveness, likes control, often in a hurry, stable relationships, tough, inflexible, and poor listener. When dealing with drivers, you should plan to ask questions about and discuss specifics, actions and results, use facts and logic, when necessary, disagree with facts rather than opinions, keep it business-like, efficient and to the point, personal guarantees and testimonials are least effective, and better to provide options and facts [1].
2.2. A proposed integrated framework for web portals evaluation criteria
3.2. Perfect Melancholy (Analytical)
Based on the previous review, an integrated framework for web portals evaluation criteria is proposed. The proposed framework contains eight main evaluation criteria as shown in figure 1.
Perfect Melancholies are those people who strive for perfection in all things [11]. Melancholy is those that examine the data and prefer process and order. They are accurate, conscientious, precise and deliberate. They require additional time to make decisions, to have their emotions under control, and may be hesitant to take risks [6]. The melancholy is an introvert, a thinker and a bit of a pessimist. The melancholy tends to be deep and thoughtful, very analytical, serious, and purposeful [11]. The ANALYTICAL characteristics are being precise, orderly and business-like, rational and co-operative, self-controlled and serious, motivated by logic and facts, not quick to make decisions, like things in writing and detail, security conscious, critical, excellent problem solver, and likes rigid timetable. Their decisions are based on facts and logic and they avoid risk, they can often be very co-operative, but established relationships take time, consider telling them what the product would not do they will respect you for it, and discuss reasons [1].
3.3. Popular Sanguine (Expresser) Popular Sanguines are those people who exude enthusiasm [11]. Sanguine is that motivating, energizing, other characteristics include generous, influential, and socially confident, dramatic, emotional, and impulsive. Sanguine is often seen as being eccentric and overly dramatic [6]. The sanguine personality is the
Figure1: Web portals evaluation criteria framework These criteria are web portals content, web portal design, web portal personalization, web portal community, web portal business issue, web portal search engine, web portal emotional issue, and 393
Forth International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Information Systems March 19-22, 2009, Cairo, Egypt
extrovert, the talker, the optimist. The popular sanguine has a very appealing personality [11]. The EXPRESSIVE characteristics are being reactive, decisions spontaneous, placing more importance on relationships than tasks, emotionally expressive, sometimes dramatic, flexible agenda; short attention span, easily loved, enthusiastic, strong persuasive skills; talkative and gregarious, optimistic; takes risks, and creative. Some ideas for dealing with expressive, you should seek opinions in an area you wish to develop to achieve mutual understanding, discussion should be people as well as fact oriented, try short, fast moving experience stories, make sure to pin them down in a friendly way, and remember to discuss the future as well as the present [1].
4.1. Questionnaire Design A closed-ended questionnaire was used in this research. This questionnaire contains two main sections, the first one was used to rank the different web portals evaluation criteria and the second one was used to determine the user's type of personality. In the first section of the questionnaire the users were ask to rank the eight web portals quality criteria using a predefined scale shown in table 1. To measure the stability of the respondent an additional criterion, web portal entertaining, was added. This criterion was used to determine the user stability as it has a similar meaning as the web portal emotional issues criterion. If the respondent ranked the two criteria using the same degree, then questionnaire was accepted, otherwise the questionnaire was rejected.
3.4. Peaceful Phlegmatic (Amiable) Peaceful Phlegmatics are those people who are happily reconciled to life [11]. Phlegmatic care about including everyone, they are patient, supportive and considerate. They are easy going and dependable and would just like everyone to get along. They are often seen as deliberate, questioning, and too concerned with other’s feelings, supportive, and ask a lot of questions [6]. They’re very easy going and relaxed, calm, cool and collected. Patient, well balanced, leads a very consistent life [11]. The phlegmatic person just wants peace. The peaceful don't want to be in control of everything. The peaceful type wants to take life easy and live in peace [13]. The AMIABLE characteristics are being Dependent on others, respectful, willing and agreeable, emotionally expressive, everyone's friend; supportive; soft-hearted, low risk taker, likes security, group builder, over sensitive, and not goal orientated. Some ideas for dealing with amiable, you should work, jointly, seek common ground, find out about personal interests and family, be patient, use personal assurance and specific guarantees and avoid options and probabilities, and take time to be agreeable [1].
Table 1: Scaling of the web portals evaluation criteria Degree of importance
Numerical rating
Most important
5
More important
4
Important
3
Less important
2
Least important
1
In the second section of the questionnaire the type of personality of the respondent was determined using Florence Littauer’s personality test [11]. This test contains 40 questions and the users have to select from the answers given for each question the feature present in his/her personality. Based on the respondent answers, the personality was determined by adding the features selected by the respondent for each type of personality. The personality that gets the highest number of features is the respondent personality.
4. Relationship between the types of personality and the web portals evaluation criteria Different users can not be treated as the same because people have different drives, abilities, and personalities [14]. Each person has one master type of personality, however the other characteristics of other personalities can also be present but with lower effect [6]. In commercial negotiations, some people negotiate quickly and take risks; others take their time and try to avoid risk. Some buyers are very loyal, others will automatically shop around. Some negotiators can be quite intimidating to the point of being rude; others are quite passive and easily manipulated. This makes selling and negotiating a real challenge. To negotiate with all these different buyer types there is a harm need to be able to adapt web portals to suit different types of personalities [1]. Jafari [7] said that he is looking forward to a day when every homepage on every campus has a small sign-on box in the top left corner of its front page. After a single sign-on, members receive a portal page that is intelligently personalized and optimized for each individual member of the portal community [7]. This shows how personalizing the web portal for each customer is a critical issue and has a positive effect on the customer's satisfaction. This paper aims to rank the different web portals quality criteria based on diferent types of personality.
4.2. Data Collection and Analysis Three hundred and fifty (350) people took part in this study. They were all students and teaching staff in the faculty of Computers and Informatics at Zagazig University, Egypt. As a pre-condition to their enrollment in this study, all participants had to have prior experience in Internet use. Of the 350 participants, only 300 submitted the questionnaire after answering the questions. Of the 300 received questionnaires, only 180 questionnaires were accepted after passing the stability test. The weighted average of each criterion of the web portal’s criteria was calculated for the general trend and for each type of personality. The weighted average calculations were done using the following formula.
σହୀଵ ݅ ܴ݅ כ Weighted average= -------------------N Where:
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Forth International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Information Systems March 19-22, 2009, Cairo, Egypt
i: is the numerical rating corresponding to the degree of importance of each criterion,
Table3: Choleric Trends of web portals evaluation criteria
Ri: is the number of respondents giving this degree of importance, N: is the number of respondents belonging to this type of personality.
5. Results and Discussion 5.1. Calculating the Total Rank Accumulated Participants' Opinions
Criteria
Total rank
Using
In this approach, all participant's opinions (180) are accumulated regardless their types of personality. Table 2 and Figure 2 show the total weighted average and the total rank of the eight criteria. The web business issue criterion got the highest rank and the web community criterion got the smallest rank. Although the search engine was not a predefined criterion for web portals evaluation, it got the second rank.
Weighted average
1
Content (a)
4.152
2
Business issue (e)
4.121
3
Design (b)
4.091
4
Search engine (f)
3.97
5
Emotional issue(g)
3.939
6
Community (d)
3.788
7
Evaluation and development (h)
3.606
8
Personalization (c)
3.545
Weighted average
4.5 Table2: General Trends of web portals evaluation criteria
Weighted average
Total rank
Criteria
Weighted average
1
Business issue (e)
4.256
2
Search engine (f)
4.067
3
Content (a)
4.067
4
Design (b)
4.056
5
Emotional issue(g)
3.85
6
Evaluation and development (h)
3.767
7
Personalization (c)
3.728
8
Community (d)
3.7
4 3.5 3 a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
Web portals evaluation criteria
Figure 3: Total Rank based on Choleric Personality Opinions.
5.3. Calculating the Total Rank based on Melancholy Personality Opinions. From the accepted 180 questionnaires, 52 questionnaires were melancholy. In this approach, the total weighted average and total rank of the eight criteria are calculated based on the opinions of 52 melancholy participants as shown in Table 4 and Figure 4. The web business issue criterion got the highest rank and the personalization criterion got the smallest rank.
4.4 4.2 4 3.8 3.6 3.4
Table4: Melancholy Trends of web portals evaluation criteria
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
Total rank
h
Criteria
Weighted average
1
Business issue (e)
4.365
Web portals evaluation criteria
2
Design (b)
4.288
Figure 2: Total Rank based on all personalities
3
Content (a)
4.25
4
Search engine (f)
4.173
5.2. Calculating the Total Rank based on Choleric Personality Opinions.
5
Evaluation and development (h)
4.077
6
Emotional issue(g)
4.058
From the accepted 180 questionnaires, 33 questionnaires were choleric. In this approach, the total weighted average and total rank of the eight criteria are calculated based on the opinions of 33 choleric participants as shown in Table 3 and Figure 3. The web content criterion got the highest rank and the personalization criterion got the smallest rank.
7
Community (d)
3.942
8
Personalization (c)
3.731
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Forth International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Information Systems March 19-22, 2009, Cairo, Egypt
5.5. Calculating the Total Rank based on phlegmatic Personality Opinions.
Weighted average
4.5 4
From the accepted 180 questionnaires, 60 questionnaires were phlegmatic. In this approach, the total weighted average and total rank of the eight criteria are calculated based on the opinions of 60 phlegmatic participants as shown in Table 6 and Figure 6. The web content criterion got the highest rank and the web community criterion got the smallest rank.
3.5 3 a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
Web portals evaluation criteria
Table6: Phlegmatic Trends of web portals evaluation criteria
Figure 4: Total Rank based on Melancholy Personality Opinions.
Total rank
5.4. Calculating the Total Rank based on sanguine Personality Opinions. From the accepted 180 questionnaires, 35 questionnaires were sanguine. In this approach, the total weighted average and total rank of the eight criteria are calculated based on the opinions of 52 sanguine participants as shown in Table 5 and Figure 5. The web business issue criterion got the highest rank and the community criterion got the smallest rank.
Criteria
Weighted average
1
Content (a)
4.167
2
Search engine (f)
4.083
3
Business issue (e)
4.05
4
Design (b)
3.933
5
Personalization (c)
3.9
6
Emotional issue(g)
3.617
7
Evaluation and development (h)
3.617
8
Community (d)
3.567
Table5: Sanguine Trends of web portals evaluation criteria Total rank
Criteria
Weighted average
Business issue (e)
4.571
4.5
2
Content (a)
4.257
4
3
Search engine (f)
3.971
4
Design (b)
3.886
5
Emotional issue(g)
3.857
6
Evaluation and development (h)
3.714
7
Personalization (c)
8
Community (d)
Weighted average
1
3 a
3.6
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
Web portals evaluation criteria
3.486
Figure 6: Total Rank based on phlegmatic Personality Opinions.
6. Conclusion
6
The relationship between the types of personality and Web portals evaluation criteria is an emerging topic of Web Technologies, attracting the attention of both the industry and the research community. This study developed an integrated framework for web portals evaluation criteria. This framework contains the following eight main criteria: web business issue, web content, web design, web community, web personalization, web search engine; web entertaining, and web evaluation and development. We tried to find a relationship between the four types of personality (choleric, sanguine, melancholy, phlegmatic) and the web portals evaluation criteria. The results indicated that each type of personality ranked these criteria in a different way. So to increase the users' satisfaction, web portals developers should take the user’s types of personality into consideration.
4 Weighted average
3.5
2 0 a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
Web portals evaluation criteria
Figure 5: Total Rank based on sanguine Personality Opinions.
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Forth International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Information Systems March 19-22, 2009, Cairo, Egypt
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