Effects of Different Website Designs on First Impressions, Aesthetic Judgements and Memory Performance after Short Presentation

Abstract

The current study investigates how different types of company website designs influence first impressions, aesthetic evaluations, and memory performance. We implemented an online study with a between-subjects design to examine differences between three design categories identified by ten experts in a pretest: SCOFA (strong colours of one colour family), LAPIC (large pictures), and SAPAT (same amount of pictures and text). The data of 458 participants (52.2% female) reveal that a) after an exposure time of five seconds, response times for website-related attributes differ between the categories, b) LAPIC and SAPAT are perceived as more aesthetic than SCOFA, c) memory performance is best on SAPAT sites. These results underline the importance of first impressions of a site's appearance and provide practical guidance for web designers by showing what users associate with certain designs, which designs they prefer, and which sites are the most memorable.

Experimental investigation on the effects of website aesthetics on user performance in different virtual tasks

“…Multiple studies suggest that an aesthetic interface could enhance performance (e.g., Douneva, Jaron & Thielsch, 2016; Miller, 2011; Pomales-Garcia, Liu & Mendez, 2005; Sonderegger & Sauer, 2010; Strebe, 2016; Tuch et al, 2009; Um et al, 2012; Van Schaik & Ling, 2008), or that aesthetics has an at least partially positive effect on performance (e.g., Moshagen, Musch & Göritz, 2009; Plass et al, 2014; Reppa & McDougall, 2015). There are two prominent theories that try to explain a positive effect of aesthetics on performance: (1) the ‘positive affect mediation’ hypothesis (Norman, 2002; Norman, 2004), a cognitive theory, and (2) the ‘increased motivation’ hypothesis (Sonderegger & Sauer, 2010), a motivational theory.…”

“…Firstly, the manipulation of aesthetics is diverse: for example, manipulations of just one facet (e.g., color; Hall & Hanna, 2004; Moshagen, Musch & Göritz, 2009) versus a broad manipulation (e.g., Miller, 2011; Sonderegger & Sauer, 2010). Secondly, the operationalization of performance varies, encompassing task duration (e.g., Chawda et al, 2005; Moshagen, Musch & Göritz, 2009), number of correct answers (e.g., Douneva, Jaron & Thielsch, 2016; Van Schaik & Ling, 2009), number of errors (e.g., Reppa & McDougall, 2015; Salimun et al, 2010), number of commands needed (e.g., Reinecke & Bernstein, 2011; Sonderegger & Sauer, 2010; Sonderegger et al, 2014), as well as comprehension and transfer (Plass et al, 2014; Um et al, 2012). Thirdly, the type of tasks differs, spanning classical search tasks (e.g., Tuch et al, 2009; Van Schaik & Ling, 2009), creative tasks (e.g., Bonnardel, Piolat & Le Bigot, 2011) or learning tasks (e.g., Heidig, Müller & Reichelt, 2015; Miller, 2011; Um et al, 2012).…”

“…Thirdly, the type of tasks differs, spanning classical search tasks (e.g., Tuch et al, 2009; Van Schaik & Ling, 2009), creative tasks (e.g., Bonnardel, Piolat & Le Bigot, 2011) or learning tasks (e.g., Heidig, Müller & Reichelt, 2015; Miller, 2011; Um et al, 2012). Fourth, the existing studies have been conducted with a variety of different products and interfaces for example ATM applications (e.g., Tractinsky, Katz & Ikar, 2000), Browser-based applications and websites (e.g., Douneva, Haines & Thielsch, 2015; Douneva, Jaron & Thielsch, 2016; Katz, 2010; Ling & van Schaik, 2006; Van Schaik & Ling, 2009), software (e.g., Reinecke & Bernstein, 2011), mobile phones (e.g., Quinn & Tran, 2010; Sauer & Sonderegger, 2011; Sonderegger & Sauer, 2010; Sonderegger et al, 2014), or portable digital audio players (e.g., Minge & Thüring, 2018; Thüring & Mahlke, 2007). Despite these many different starting-points, possibilities of manipulation, and perspectives, a systematic pattern of whether and how aesthetics impacts performance has not appeared yet and systematic research on proposed theories is lacking (Thielsch & Niesenhaus, 2017).…”

Facets of Website Content

“…From this perspective, perceptions of content need to be separated from perceptions of a websites' design aesthetics 1 or usability 2 . Even though there are important relations between these constructs (see Thielsch et al, 2014), they can also be differentiated by the processes and time-scales at which they are formed: While aesthetic perceptions to a large degree are driven by the bottom-up processes of the human visual perception, perceptions of content are based on top-down processes, including reflective cognitive processes and reasoning (Dinet et al, 2012;Douneva, Jaron & Thielsch, 2016;Thielsch & Hirschfeld, 2012). Judgements about website aesthetics are built within a few hundred milliseconds (Bölte et al, 2017), while users need about three to four seconds to give first impression ratings about content credibility (Robins & Holmes, 2008).…”

Styling the self online: semiotic technologization in weblog publishing

“…In reviewing the literature, it emerged that only the contents of blog posts and profiles had been subject to such type of (mainly linguistic) investigation (e.g., Huffaker & Calvert, 2005;Kenix, 2009;Kerbel & Bloom, 2005;Siles, 2012), whereas the overall page/blog design was subject to usability and design studies (Bevan 2005;Cyr 2008;Djamasbi, Siegel, and Tullis 2010;Faiola 2006;Leavitt and Shneiderman 2006;Zahedi, Van Pelt, and Song 2001), often practice oriented, i.e., aimed to provide indications on best practices to be adopted, disregarding the role of graphic resources in projecting social meanings and identity. More recently, webdesign studies have paid increasing attention to aesthetics values (Douneva, Jaron, and Thielsch 2016;Seckler, Opwis, and Tuch 2015;Silvennoinen and Jokinen 2016;Strebe 2016;Tuch et al 2012;Reinecke and Gajos 2014), yet always to determine their impact on users' perceived reliability, rather than on the potential of the design of a website/blog to express its owner's identity. To answer it, the next section examines WordPress model of semiotic production and regulation, while the following one analyses its effects on self-expression through changes in the design of a blog.…”