E-Commerce Web design : The importance of a first impression

Abstract: The technical society we live in is in a constant state of advancement and we are continuallyintroduced to new innovative ways of mediating information through. Today, plenty of mediachannels exist, for organizations to use when they strive to reach larger groups of people, butto achieve web site success; researchers have stated that considerations of user preferencesimplemented in web design are crucial. This makes understanding and addressing whichcharacteristics will be valued from the moment a user enters a site something that isconsidered helpful to the web designer in order to maintain user traffic and create an interest.In other words, something to catch the user’s attention to create a good first impression is necessary. The constant state of advancement of technology prevailing today has resulted in even morecomplex websites and a countless number of design principles to apply when designing forthe web. In spite of this, usability and visual appeal have remained central in prior research.To test these theories, a study was conducted by using a qualitative method in form of anexperiment consisting of eye tracking and an open-ended questionnaire. To perform the eyetracking the researchers created two mock-ups representing the main page of two differentwebsites. Each mock-up was developed with considerations towards two different designapproaches, one striving to achieve visual appeal and the other towards usability, todetermine which one the participants preferred. The study contained 50 participants who performed the experiment and answered thequestionnaire. Results from the eye tracking were presented in gaze plots and heat maps andthe result from the questionnaire was presented and analyzed through coding by the researchers. Final findings showed that the website preferred by most participants were the one developedwith the usable design approach. Additionally, the discussion presented the findings andreaches a conclusion of the study which finds connections between the chosen designapproach of the webpage and the participant’s choice of preferred webpage.