Market-e: An E-Commerce Platform for Local Markets

Abstract

E-commerce is a technological application that has proven very useful, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. The presence of e-commerce websites, online shopping, and presence of other virtual services has increased during lockdown and quarantine periods when people tend to spend most of their time in their houses. The recommender system made an e-commerce website sustainable to the needs of its customers. The direct transaction of local producers makes a convenient price lookout for those who are living in the city. This study developed an e-commerce website that caters to the need of urban consumers to cut costs through direct shopping of goods to local producers. This study aims to see what features of the developed system can be identified as a factor to be called useable. In this context, usability is defined as a measurement to perceive how easy, or effective can one do a task. To determine the usability of the system, multiple standard questionnaires such as Nielsen Heuristics Evaluation and Questionnaire for User Interface Satisfaction were deployed. Random sampling was done in three (3) groups of end-users, specifically, the consumers, the store vendors, and the store owners. The results showed that some factors need improvement, but the system's overall design reflected how satisfactory it is to the target users. Finally, it may be concluded that the system has successfully reflected the user interface design from the prototype to the final system, which satisfied one of the six styles of usability requirements, the design style.