If you’ve ever wondered whether or not it’s worth it to have “just any website” vs. a “high quality web site built by professionals”, here are four reasons (studies) to choose the latter.
Various studies have been conducted to find out just what influences people’s perception of a website’s credibility:
- Stanford-Makovsy Web Credibility Study 2002: Investigating What Makes Web Sites Credible Today
- What Makes A Web Site Credible? A Report on a Large Quantitative Study
- The Elements of Computer Credibility
- Elements that Affect Web Credibility: Early Results from a Self-Report Study (Proceedings of ACM CHI 2000 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, v.2, New York: ACM Press)
We don’t know if Fever app is any good, but the sleek user interface and website make a great first impression.
One interesting finding of these studies is that users really do judge a book by its cover… or rather, a website by its design. Elements such as layout, consistency, typography, color and style all affect how users perceive your website and what kind of image you project. Your website should project not only a good image but also the right one for your audience.
Other factors that influence credibility are: the quality of the website’s content, amount of errors, rate of updates, ease of use and trustworthiness of authors.
