Evaluating the sophistication of e-commerce websites in Barbados

An earlier study [1] examined the sophistication of e-tourism websites in Barbados and determined that although these websites were easy to use and provided some product/service information, they generally lacked company information, innovation in services, transaction processing and customer services. The earlier study assumed that since tourism was the largest foreign exchange earner these websites would generally be better than the websites for the other service industries. This paper expands on the earlier study by evaluating websites for the real-estate, online shops, banking and insurance service industries. This new study concludes that although e-tourism websites were generally more sophisticated than insurance and real-estate websites, they were less sophisticated than banking and online shops. The factors contributing to these results included the need for banking websites to have high security and privacy, as well as a high level of customization. Using the results of these two studies a clear picture of the level of sophistication of Barbadian websites is presented. In addition, a set of guidelines are detailed, which could promote the growth of e-commerce in Barbados.