14. PAST EXPERIENCE WITH Web Site — 4.6% OVERALL

In assessing the credibility of the sites in this study, people sometimes drew on their past experiences with a site to reach a conclusion. This occurred in 4.6% of the comments we collected. In most comments of this nature, past experience with a site boosted its credibility — but not always. A negative previous experience with a site led to a lower credibility evaluation. Sample comments are below:

• I've used this site before and it did not meet my expectations. — F, 50, Washington

• I have used it frequently and find it very useful. — F, 50, Missouri

Past Experience with Site comments by site category

As shown in Figure 19, less than 5 percent (4.6%) of all site evaluations commented on the user's previous experiences with the site under evaluation, whether good or bad. This occurred with greater frequency in the search engine (12.8%), news (9.0%), e-commerce (7.9%) and travel (6.2%) categories, and with less frequency in the health (2.1%) and finance (1.5%) categories.

Figure 19: Percentage of comments relating to past experience, by category.

What we find notable about Past Experience

For this topic more than the others, the sites we chose to include in the research influenced the comments people made. Had we chosen obscure sites, we would have found few comments about past experience — people saying they had never used the site before (this seemed to be the case with the sites we chose for opinion or review). The participants drew on their past experience in making their credibility assessment, especially when it came to search engine sites like Google and Yahoo! that people had used previously.. We caution readers about interpreting the scores for this topic too strictly, since more than any other comment category, when it comes to past experience, the results would have been different had we selected other sites for this study.

15. INFORMATION CLARITY — 3.7% OVERALL

In 3.7% of the comments, people in this study addressed the clarity of information (or the extent to which the information was easily understood) when evaluating a Web Site Credibility. Sample comments are below:

• Clear, concise information on home page — tells you what you need to know right away in an up-front manner. — F, 51, Australia

• Easy to understand...I felt comfortable reading and understanding the information presented. — F, 33, New Jersey

• Very wordy and vague information. — F, 50, California

Information Clarity comments, by site category

Figure 20 shows that a mere 3.7 percent of all site evaluations included comments relating to information clarity — that is, whether or not a site's content is clear and understandable. This occurred slightly more frequently in the finance (6.6%), health (6.0%), and search engines (4.2%) categories, and slightly less frequently in the nonprofit and sports categories (1.9%, each), as well as in opinion or review (1.7%) and entertainment (1.6%) categories.

Figure 20: Percentage of comments relating to information clarity, by category.

What we find notable about Information Clarity

We suspect that issues of information clarity figure more prominently into credibility evaluations than the data show here. In our view, presenting information clearly is as important to a positive user experience as having a good information structure, both of which contribute positively to credibility evaluations. The relatively small percentage of comments about information clarity could be due to a participant's not wanting to admit he or she didn't understand the information on the site (people don't like to admit they can't understand something). If these numbers are any indication, people were most confused by information on finance and health Web Sites and were least confused by information on entertainment and opinion or review sites. Although the differences between the extremes is small (6.6% for finance sites vs. 1.6% for entertainment sites), this result makes sense, since one might expect entertainment sites to have the simplest information and finance sites to have the most complicated.

16. PERFORMANCE ON TEST BY USER — 3.6% OVERALL
In relatively few cases, people devised their own tests in order to evaluate t

he credibility of a Web Site in this study (e.g., performing a search on the site). The results of the test helped them form an assessment of the site credibility. Tests of this nature showed up in 3.6 percent of the comments, some samples of which are below:

• Had more credible hits when searching for biogeochemical data. — M, 55, Tennessee

• I did not find hypothyroidism or thyroiditis on the Web Site despite the commonality of the disease. — F, 41, New York

Performance on a Test by User comments by site category

As Figure 21 shows, less than four percent (or 3.6%) of all site evaluations referred to issues of performance testing — that is, short tests performed by consumers that helped them to evaluate a Web Site Credibility. Not surprisingly, this occurred with greater frequency in areas in which speedy access to accurate information is perhaps more important (search engines: 13.8%; travel: 8.6%), and occurred with less frequency in areas in which timely delivery of information is of less concern (health: 3.4%; news: 2.2%; and opinion or review: 1.7%). Consumers did not have access to active brokerage accounts for each finance site for the purposes of this study, which may account for the very low percentage of consumers who performed such tests in this category.

Figure 21: Percentage of comments relating to performance on a test, by category.

What we find notable about Performance on Test by User

Although surface features tended to dominate many participants' responses, search engines and travel sites (where a user could go through the steps to set up a mock flight) allow the user to make assessments based on a simple test. It is not clear from the study how far users will typically go to test the credibility of a site in order to make an important decision (as opposed to making a decision to satisfy the requirements of a study). The content of the comments suggested that at least some people were quite familiar with testing a site in order to assess the Web Site Credibility.

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

Continue with:

• 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