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

What we find notable about Design Look

One of the overall findings from this study is that our participants relied heavily on the surface qualities of a Web Site to make Web Site Credibility judgments. Our result about the prominence of Design Look was not what we had hoped to find; we had hoped to see that people used more rigorous evaluation strategies. However, our result is consonant with findings of other research (Cockburn and McKenzie, 2001) that describes typical Web-navigation behavior as "rapidly interactive," meaning that Web users typically spend small amounts of time at any given page, moving from page to page quickly. If such rapid navigation is indeed the norm for most types of Web use, then it makes sense that Web users have developed efficient strategies, such as focusing on the Design Look, for evaluating whether a Web Site is worthwhile.

Our results about the connection between Design Look and perceived Web Site Credibility suggests that creating Web Sites with quality information alone is not enough to win Web Site Credibility in users' minds. In most cases Web Site designers need also to focus on the impression that the visual design will make, creating a site that achieves what many of our participants described as "a polished, professional look." But the connection between visual design and Web Site Credibility may not be so simple. Slick-looking Web Sites frequently received negative comments. Participants seemed to make judgments about the people behind the site on the basis of the Design Look. Many comments were indicative of this attitude: "It looks like it's designed by a marketing team, and not by people who want to get you the information that you need."

Based on the comments we've read from this study, we speculate that once a site is above a user's personal threshold to qualifying as having a "professional look," then other aspects of the Web Site come into the Web Site Credibility equation. In other words, the visual design may be the first test of a Web Site Credibility. If it fails on this criterion, Web users are likely to abandon the site and seek other sources of information and services.

We discuss the topic of Design Look in more depth at the end of this section.

2. INFORMATION DESIGN/STRUCTURE — 28.5% OVERALL

After Design Look, the next category that people commented on in assessing Web Site Credibility was the structure of the site's information, being mentioned in 28.5% of the total comments. The participant comments discussed how well or poorly the information fit together, as well as how hard it was to navigate the site to find things of interest. While information structure is often associated with usability, the comments here show how information structure has implications for Web Site Credibility. Sites that were easy to navigate were seen as being more credible. Some sample comments are below:

• This site is very well organized, which lends to more Web Site Credibility. — M, 33, Illinois

• This one is more credible because it is more organized. — F, 57, Maryland

• Horrible site, information badly presented. They try to put everything on the front page, instead of having multiple layers of navigation. This to me suggests that they developed this thing on a whim. — M, 42, Canada

Information Design/Structure comments, by site category

As shown in Figure 7, more than a quarter (28.5%) of all site evaluations made reference to issues of site information design — that is, the site's overall information structure or organization. This occurred much more frequently in the search engines (42.6%), finance (33.0%), and travel (31.8%) categories, and less frequently in the opinion or review (24.3%), sports (22.3%), and nonprofit (18.2%) categories.

Figure 7: Percentage of comments relating to information design by category.

What we find notable about Information Structure

That information design affects Web Site Credibility should come as no surprise. A well-organized site is the antithesis to a site that purposely confuses and misleads a user toward advertisements and other promotions.

Online usability research has made it clear that information structure is critical for task success on the Web, and ease of use has been shown to contribute to Web Site Credibility perceptions in previous research (Fogg et al., 2000; Fogg et al., 2001; Fogg et al., 2002). The reason behind this consistent finding isn't completely clear. One might speculate that by providing a clear information structure, a Web design team demonstrates expertise to the users. Users may then assume this expertise extends to the quality of information on the site.

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

Continue with:

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