Measuring the Success Factors of aWebsite: Statistical Methods and an Application to a “Web District”

In this paper we propose a statistical methodology to address the issue of measuring success factors of an ecommerce application, and in particular of a regional e-marketplace, using as a measurement framework based on the customers’ satisfaction. In the first part of the paper, two different ranking methods have been compared in order to identify the more appropriate tool to analyse the opinions expressed by the visitors: a novel non parametric index, named the Stochastic dominance index, built on the basis of the cumulative distribution function alone, and a qualitative ranking based on the median and on the Leti Index. SDI has resulted to be more convenient for comparison purposes and, according to this measurement tool, the higher satisfaction has been expressed for the quality of the products. Then, a logistic regression has been performed to understand the impact of the different satisfaction factors on the overall satisfaction. The empirical evidence confirms the literature on the importance of the different success factors, showing thatWebsite user friendliness and Information about purchase mechanisms have the major impact on the overall satisfaction.