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How Do People Evaluate a Web Site's Credibility?
theduck writes "Ever suspected (or feared) that web users are mostly mindless sheep evaluating your website more by the eye candy than your carefully crafted content? Well, it appears you were right. A study resulting from a collaboration between Consumer Webwatch and The Stanford Pervasive technology Lab reports that even though consumers say that they look for content first when evaluating the credibility of a website, they actually focus primarily on design look and information design/structure (i.e. ease of navigation). Of course, the study's methodology might have something to do with the results..."
What good is the best content in the world if it's difficult to navigate your way through it?
In real life communication people are able to get much non-verbal information from the speaker, giving hints as to whether they are passionate about their topic of conversation, or even whether they really believe it or not.
While ultimately the content itself is paramount, having a well-designed site will show visitors that you at least care enough about it to put some effort it.
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
...and what they're looking for. Obviously a site that is impossible to navigate is't going to be very popular, but the savvy user who knows what he/she is looking for will certaintly be more focused on content than presentation.
Of course, the 'internet surfer', who is typically not looking for anything specific, is more likely to be captivated by 'shiney things'. Given the nature of the study's methods, I'm thinking that was the case.
Since there was no guarantee that the person in question had any interest whatsoever in what they were showed, how could they honestly judge the page based on *content*?
=Smidge=
I don't have a problem with sites using flash liberally, so long as they provide a non-flash way to get to the same information on the web site. This is especially important for an index page...you ought to allow people into the site without them having to wait for your animation to download.
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
Here's an alternative thesis.
Is it possible to say that poorly designed websites reflect a certain apathy on the web designer's part? Surely (the argument goes), if designers didn't care enough about the design, they wouldn't have cared enough about the info they provide.
Now, that's a statement that wouldn't apply to me. I use Opera 6.05 to navigate, so I get more than my usual share of poor design (bad html, javascript, MS-proprietary tags etc). However, personally I don't care; my focus has always been on finding the info I want, for which I use the excellent the find-in-page and the google search buttons that Opera provides.
Bottomline: It's probably not poor navigation per se, but a bad impression on the viewer.
More than mere navel gazing.
I don't believe that holds true for all users or all types of information. The more detailed the information you seek, the less concerned you are with the look of the site. Example: I've been thinking about building a guitar, and have literally spent hours reading articles at Frank Ford's site. That's one of the plainest web pages you could imagine, but the information there is pure gold.
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
Its all about what's appropriate.
I know some people who hate all web applets on principle. I know a lot of people who hate all flash on principle. But what the whole thing really boils down to is this:
Does it add anything to the site, without taking anything away?
Flash with no way to avoid it detracts from the site because people with slow connections are inconvienved. Fancy applets everywhere detract from the site because not all browsers can handle them.
But applets that add optional extra usability, or flash navigational elements with a HTML alternative are fine by me.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Code that runs perfectly but is uncommented, undocumented, and mostly consists of one 3000 line file titled main.cpp with five methods == bad code
The distinction between information and data is critical. If Site A has the data I want, but Site B has it and has already intelligently decomposed it into information for me, then Site B wins. It's not even a distinction that only matters to non-power users; any thoughtful person will prefer to spend less time digesting data into information and more time applying that information in interesting ways. This is a dynamic that is seen in good coding practice, in (G)UI design, in web design, in short, in any sort of content presentation.
This is not to defend presentations that _obscure_ the information being presented, but rather to highlight the importance of _correct_ content presentation. Clarity of presentation is a creature of balance; neither too little nor too much. If Flash can make your information clearer, use it. If Flash obscures your information, ditch it.
Of course they judged the books first by their cover. We do it with books, with the people we meet, with stores at the mall and around town!
We need to do that. It helps us decide whether we want to pursure things further or move on to the next thing. Otherwise we would have to fully investigate everything.
Does it work 100%? No, but it works well enough that nobody is going to stop doing it.
-- Many men would appreciate a woman's mind more if they could fondle it