Bullish on the Future of E-commerce—Dr. Jakob Nielsen

E-commerce sites can do so much better than they do today if only they will design more for the special characteristics of the online medium. That's the main reason I am bullish on the future of e-commerce.

The potential of new technology is great. And the number of Internet users world-wide is expected to double from about half a billion in 2002 to a full billion in a fairly small number of years. Yes, both of these changes will happen, and they will both add substantially to e-commerce sales.

There is an incredibly strong trend on the web toward globalization. The majority of users are outside the U.S., with Asia growing at a fast rate. International usability is worse than in the U.S. We ...

Get Customer-Centered Design: A New Approach to Web Usability now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.