How Do People Evaluate a Web Site Credibility?
Results from a Large Study Part One

source: consumerwebwatch.org

Overall Analysis of Web Site Credibility Comments

As explained in the Methods section, participants were given the opportunity to leave brief comments about the Web Site Credibility of the two sites assigned to them. Table 1 presents an overall picture of our content analysis for comments about all 100 sites in this study. This table shows 18 types of comments, from "design look" to "affiliations." The percentages in the table represent how often a comment on that topic appeared in the entire set of comments. For example, participants in our study mentioned something about the "design look" of the site in 46.1% of the 2,440 comments.

Table 1: How often participants commented on various issues when evaluating the Web Site Credibility of Web Sites.

While the percentages in Table 1 show the types and frequency of comments about Web Site Credibility, the table alone does not give rich information. Below we provide explanations and examples for each type of comment, along with the incidence for each category of Web Site.

1. DESIGN LOOK — 46.1% OVERALL

When evaluating the Web Site Credibility of a Web Site, participants commented on the design look of the site more often than any other Web Site feature, with 46.1% of the comments addressing the design look in some way. When coding for comments on design look, researchers included comments on many elements of the visual design, including layout, typography, white space, images, color schemes, and so on. The comments could be either positive or negative. Some of the comments coded in this category are as follows:

• This site is more credible. I find it to be much more professional looking. — M, 38, Washington

• More pleasing graphics, higher-quality look and feel — F, 52, Tennessee

• Just looks more credible. — M, 24, New Jersey

• Actually, despite the subject of the Web Site, it looks very credible. This may be due to the subdued color scheme and the font used on the left-hand side of the page. — F, 29, California

• I know this is superficial, but the first thing that struck me is the color difference. The … site is a soothing green (sort of like money) while the [other] site is a jarring purple. — M, 56, Virginia

• The design is sloppy and looks like some adolescent boys in a garage threw this together. — F, 48, California

• Not very professional looking. Don't like the cheesy graphics. — F, 33, Washington

• Looks childish and like it was put together in 5 minutes. — F, 25, Maryland

Design Look comments, by site category
As shown in Figure 6, nearly half of all site evaluators (46.1%) used visual cues, such as the site's overall design or look, to assess a Web Site Credibility. This happened slightly more frequently with finance (54.6%), search engines (52.6%) and travel (50.5%) categories, and less frequently with the health (41.8%) and news (39.6%) categories.

Figure 6: Percentage of comments relating to design look, by category

Back to start of the article: A Good Web Site Design Brings Trust and Success

Continue with:

What we find notable about Design Look

How Do People Evaluate a Web Site Credibility;

• INFORMATION FOCUS
  
• Company Motive
  
• Information Usefulness
  
• Advertising
  
• Identity of Web Site Operator
  
• Past Experience with Web Site
  
• Readability
  
• Why is Design Look so prominent?
  
• ENTERTAINMENT Web Sites: CREDIBILITY RESULTS
  
• HEALTH Web SiteS: CREDIBILITY RESULTS
  
• NONPROFIT Web SiteS: CREDIBILITY RESULTS
  
• TRAVEL Web SiteS: CREDIBILITY RESULTS