The effects of dynamic prompt and background transparency of hover feedback design on the user interface of shopping websites

Abstract

PurposeThe implementation of interaction design concepts to facilitate communication between users and shopping websites has gained increasing attention in recent years. Mouse hover is a vital interaction method for users to access shopping sites and significantly impacts their decision-making experience. A well-designed mouse hover function can effectively enhance the user's search performance and improve the user experience. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the dynamic prompt designs at the hover position and the degree of feedback transparency may affect the user's task performance and personal feelings when operating the hover function on the shopping website.Design/methodology/approachThe study employed two independent variables in the experiments: dynamic prompt and background transparency of hover feedback. A between-subject design of 2 (single flicker and continuous flicker) × 3 (transparency at 0%, 25%, and 50%) was adopted in the experiment. A total of 60 participants were invited to participate in the experiment using the purposive sampling method. Participants were asked to complete four operation tasks, and the time of each was recorded. They were then asked to complete the system usability scale (SUS) questionnaire and conduct subjective evaluations before they were briefly interviewed.FindingsThe generated results revealed that: (1) In the interaction with a shopping website, the degree of background transparency of hover feedback affected the participants' task performance. (2) The effect of a single flicker had significantly higher subjective evaluation results regarding the degree of rationality compared with a continuous flicker. (3) The participants' perceptions of the information clarity were affected when the background transparency of hover feedback was 50%. (4) The effect of a continuous flicker was better than that of a single flicker when the background transparency of hover feedback was 25%. The participants' attraction to a continuous flicker was significantly higher than that of a single flicker. Nonetheless, when the degree of background transparency was at 0% or 50%, the results were the opposite.Originality/valueThe findings generated from the research can be a reference for the development of hover operation in the user interface design for shopping websites.

Exploring the effects of virtual annotation background display mode and transparency through a 360-degree panorama approach to online shopping

“…This causes interference in the user's access to the complete background information during the operation, affecting the user's overall operational fluency. This is consistent with research that hovering pop-ups with 25% transparency can improve users' visual search performance on shopping websites (Chen and Zhai, 2023). In Task 3, the experimental results showed a significant difference between 25% transparency and 0% or 50% transparency.…”