WEB RESOURCES:

Nature of the Content
This paper presented investigates four top performing e-commerce sites, to develop a best practices guide on the information architecture of a shopping cart. By exploring process oriented techniques, a set of eight principles for the design of the shopping cart and process purchase. The paper presents examples and features of the four sites which help distiguish customer requirements.

Timeliness
May 2000, It is often difficult to get timely information on such a subject matter, because to determine the success of a process such as purchase transactions, you need to reflect on a certain amount of time, to know determine its influence. In this case, therefore, it can be considered rather timely.

Audience
Web Designers of Usability, Information Architects of commercial sites ( those involving shopping carts)

Relevance
Understanding how the shopping cart works and the best way to implement the shopping transactions of a sight are vital to ensuring that consumers will purchase products. The success of a shopping transaction is a key indicator of whether your site is suitable. Best pratices even though published in 2000 is an important benchmark for any ecommerce manager/ owner to consider. Esepcially that of Amazon.com. A Helpful summary of factors essential is included as well as clear guidance through their principles to ensure a customer satisfying purchase process is needed. This would be highly recommended.

Usability & Design
The presentation of this paper is available online only in PDF format, so the usability is limited to those who can access the article through this format. The article is 19 pages using consistent headings, plain text and screen captures to illustrate lots of points. The loading time of the pdf file will obviously may take a while for users on dial -up connections which isn't good. It would be preferable if the option to view this paper in text or html format was available. The contents enable the user to quickly decide what section he or she wishes to read without needing to pursue the whole paper first. An archive of papers regarding information architecture is also provided on the site (http://argus-acia.com/white_papers/index.html), with a few articles also regarding e-commerce.