ABSTRACT
This research aims to identify, compare, and contrast the usability of key international e-commerce websites with those in the Arab world, and to offer advice on how to remedy the usability problems on the latter to make them more competitive. Heuristic evaluations were undertaken on three international e-commerce websites and four comparable Arab e-commerce websites. Major and minor problems were identified and rated on each of the sites before being categorized into problem areas. As expected, more major and minor usability problems were identified on the Arab e-commerce websites (average of 22 and 85 per site, respectively) compared to the key international e-commerce websites (average of 12 and 55 per site, respectively). Most problems with both the international and Arab e-commerce websites were related to content and design usability areas, respectively. A variety of unique usability problems were found on the Arab e-commerce websites.