Contributing factors to the user experience of e-commerce websites: usability, user expectations and the designer perspective

User experience (UX) design is a maturing field. This interpretivist study investigated e-commerce website usability, user expectations of e-commerce website UX, as well as the designer perspective of the user experience. E-commerce was chosen as the context for understanding the user experience, focusing on the perspective of both users and e-commerce website designers. Internet adoption is growing globally with over fifty percent of the global population using the internet (International Telecommunication Union 2019). E-commerce shopping transactions are increasingly becoming the norm (statista.com 2019). Designing inclusively for different and diverse users increasingly becoming important for both consumer users and technology businesses, particularly as technology ecosystems become more complex and ubiquitous (Rosenweig 2015; Lazar et al. 2014; Aizpurua et al. 2016). Users and designers are two distinct populations with different perspectives (Norman, 1986 - 2016; Nielsen, 1994; Press et.al, 2017; Xie et.al, 2017; Card, 2018; Xu et.al, 2018). How a designer perceives a system can be quite different from what different users expect from the UX. This study sought to better understand the problem of implicitly understanding user needs and factors contributing to best practice UX design of e-commerce websites and systems. The results indicate that both users and designers are similar in their views of some UX design factors, but as would be expected, there are also differences.  Specifically, those differences include users' concerns regarding security of purchasing and visual presentation of information and graphics. For designers the research suggests they heavily focus on information hierarchy and not surprising branding.  The findings are discussed in relation to new contributions to theory and practice, extending from the literature and offering new recommendations to UX designers in theory and practice.