I received a First Class Honours grade for my thesis entitled:

"The Effects of Website Design on Consumer Trust in E-Commerce"

Abstract
Vendors operating commercial websites face significant obstacles with regard to the uptake and acceptance of e-commerce in the minds of consumers. The impact of cyber-crime has had a substantial influence on the attitudes and perceptions of consumers, creating an atmosphere of distrust in the systems. Although considerable progress has been made towards securing the Internet environment many consumers remain reluctant to participate in making on-line purchases.

The main argument in this study is that consumer trust depends on more than just the consumers’ belief in the security of on-line systems, of equal or greater importance is the application of traditional trust building strategies which have been utilised in marketing for many years. In many cases these strategies have been overlooked by web developers and vendors alike. The main conclusions reached after evaluation of the literature and the findings of the study that forms the basis of this thesis indicate that website design can indeed have a positive effect on consumer trust in e-commerce. A great deal of responsibility for reinforcing trust in consumers lies with the web developers. This can be achieved by making efforts to educate and engender trust in visitors through the overall design and informational content of the website itself and through a careful selection and combination of website design components to be included on each website.

"Building Trust in online Customers"

This paper is based upon the research carried out in the thesis and was accepted for oral presentation at the 12th ACIS International Conference on Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Networking and Parallel/Distributed Computing (SNPD 2011). The University of Technology, Sydney, Australia 6-8 July 2011.

Download a .pdf of the thesis and the paper below.