Webdesign and the Future

Nowadays company websites are popping up like daisies. But all too often, companies create a website and forget that it costs a lot of money and work to keep it up to date. As a result, the Internet is flooded by outdated and user unfriendly websites. In this post will be taking a closer look at the three most important aspects of a user friendly website and the possible evolutions in web design. Next, I will give some examples of free open-source tools which can help to create and maintain a company’s website.

Factor 1: Navigation / Usability

A good navigation structure is necessary for a website and can even create trust among the visitors. It must replace the lack of physical evidence to create confidence and easiness of use.

The visitors of a webpage do not want to think. If they have difficulties trying to find the needed information, they will leave the site and search for the information elsewhere. No matter how important or useful the information on your website is. (Cyr,  2008)

A user must always be capable of returning to the homepage with maximum three clicks, that is why the use of so called breadcrumbs is highly advised. This will form a track, so the user always knows where he is on the website and how he can go back to previous pages.

It is even more important for design to meet the needs of the customers rather than just be attractive and fun (Nielsen, 2000). In a research conducted by (Pearson & Pearson, 2008) it is stated that personalisation and customisation are becoming major marketing tools in order to build customer relationships. The new BBC-beta website is the ideal example of good practice for the use of a good navigation and personalisation.

Factor 2: Visual Appeal

The term visual design includes colours, photographs, shapes and fonts (Cyr, 2008). When using those graphical elements, it is important that there is uniformity and continuity between de different web pages. Each colour has psychological significance which can add extra value to the web page (Hausman & Siekpe, 2009). Another important aspect within the graphical design is the use of contrast. The text should be very easy to read. A good example is Facebook. Their main colours are blue and white. The psychological connotations for blue are trust and intelligence and the white background makes the text readable as well. (Colour Affects, 2010).

Factor 3: Download Speed

Internet users have set up high standards when it comes to browsing websites. Generally if a site takes more than 3 seconds to load, the users will switch to another website to look for the needed information.

Bearing this in mind is important when engineering a website; one should carefully differentiate between “need to know” and “nice to know” aspects. The designers must thoroughly consider what pictures and movies need to be featured on the webpage. Only put them on if they add value, because otherwise, the download speed of the website will increase and lots of visitors will not have the patience to wait until everything is loaded. (Falk, Sockel, & Chen, 2005)

Future

The basic web usability factors are considered to be implemented in every website, still this is not the case, which is easily proved once we take a closer look on the worldwide web. In the recent future web designers will need to focus more on creating a relevant user experience through their website. With the vast competition in this virtual area one needs to lure their visitors through trust, emotion and persuasion. Web users make their decisions not solely on rational criteria but for a great part on emotions. (Grace,2008)

In the near future, there could be some remarkable innovations. Most of them will help the consumer to experience the company and its products.

Today, social networking websites are more and more integrated in the website’s design. By doing this, companies can show their websites visitors who already became a “fan” on their Facebook-pages. (Hilimire, 2010)

Further on, it is very possible that companies are going to integrate “visual search” instead of the old-fashion search-methods we are using now. With visual search, consumers can first see a product and they can click on it to find more information. Bing.com is currently experimenting with this technology.

Another new technology that may be implemented much more is “augmented reality”. With this innovation, consumers can experience the product without really touching it.

Open Source

Creating and maintaining a website is not cheap, but luckily there are some very handy tools which are free to use. Kompozer for example is a free open-source and easy-to-use web page editing program. Also Drupal and Joomla have already proven their effectiveness as an open source content management system.

For the graphical part, web designers can rely on GIMP or Inkscape. For uploading the files on their server, FileZilla delivers a very good solution.

Companies with less experience in website building can find a solution in blogs like WordPress or Weebly.

Sources

Colour Affects. (2010). Psychological Properties Of Colours. Retrieved March 27, 2010, from Colour affects: http://www.colour-affects.co.uk/psychological-properties-of-colours

Cyr, D. (2008). Modeling Web Site Design Across Cultures: Relationships to Trust, Satisfaction, and E-Loyality. Journal of Management Information Systems , Vol. 24 No. 4, 47–72.

Falk, L., Sockel, H., & Chen, K. (2005). E-Commerce and Consumer’s Expectations: What Makes a Website Work. Journal of Website Promotion , Vol. 1 (1), 65-75.

Hausman, A. V., & Siekpe, J. S. (2009). The effect of web interface features on consumer online purchase intentions. Journal of Business Research , 5-13.

Hilimire, J. (2010, March 18). Presentation: 8 Digital Trends That Will Change Everything – Revised. Retrieved March 27, 2010, from Jeff Hilimire: http://jeffhilimire.com

Nielsen, J. (2000). Designing Web Usability. Indiana: New Riders Publishing.

Pearson, M., & Pearson, A. (2008, Summer). An exploratory study into determining the relative importance of key criteria in web usability: a multi criteria approach. Journal of Computer Information Systems , 115-127.

Picture: http://normansheppard.com

Trust versus trustworthiness in an online environment

Internet purchasing is used more and more by consumers nowadays to buy both products and services. The reasons for this are that ordering is easy, it takes less time than going to the shops, it is usually cheaper and products are delivered at home. But not everyone is convinced about this shopping method. A lot of people worry about their safety, security and privacy when they buy online. They simply do not trust e-purchasing. The next paragraphs take a closer look at the factors that influence trust and trustworthiness and evaluate their impact on e-commerce.

Trust
The definition of trust proposed by Mayer (1995) can be understood as “one party’s willingness to be in a vulnerable position subject to the other party’s actions. In this relationship, the trustor expects the trustee to take actions which are of importance to him/her, regardless of whether he/she has the ability to control or scrutinize the trustee’s actions”. Within trust we can distinguish two different participants: first of all one should consider the trustee, in this case the company that sells online and the trustor, one that makes the online purchase. (Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995).

One should keep in mind that trust is a process. A consumer has to go through different phases before he really trusts an e-vendor. Those phases are: interpretation (the consumer forms a vision about something based on insufficient information), suspension (the consumer ignores uncertainty in interpretation) and expectation (this signifies the process when one expects that the interpretation is correct and suspension is the right thing to do) (Pittayachawan, Singh, & Corbitt, 2008).

It is understandable why the idea of online shopping makes consumers feel vulnerable because they have to trust online transactions on three levels. First of all they have to trust the product. Is there sufficient quality, does it really satisfy their needs? Next, they have to trust the product offered by the online company and finally, the company’s delivery services (Lim, Hur, Sukho, & Koh, 2009).


Trustworthiness

Trust can be seen as perceived trustworthiness. This consists of three factors: ability, benevolence and integrity (Buttner & Goritz, 2008).

Related to this, if a company wants to improve trust, they have to improve their “appeal” of trustworthiness first. This can be done by several actions of the e-vendor:

First of all an e-vendor should display trust assurances on their website. An e-vendor’s own trust assurances are proven most efficient to increase the perceived trustworthiness. Potential customers tend to carefully examine trust assurances and therefore find the information quality of the trust assurance more important than the issuer of the trust assurance. (Dongmin & Izak, 2010) To increase trust the e vendor should state his trust assurance in the following manner: well structured, logical and backed up with facts.

Trust assurances generally involve three kinds of displayed statements: assurance for information transmission, credit card shopping and privacy protection.

This is why an e-vendor should provide easy access and reiterate the assurance policy information during each step of the purchasing process. Not only does this help to improve trustworthiness, it also minimises loss of sales resulting from high levels of perceived risks by potential customers.
Apart from simply displaying trust assurances on a company’s website, there are several other factors that help improve trustworthiness based on the following categories of antecedents that influence trust and perceived risk by consumers.

The level of trust is formed by the affection based antecedent, the perceived reputation of the selling party and the third-party approval of the e-vendor (although this has proven to be minimal next to own well structured assurances). Trust is partly devised based on the level of familiarity, Internet experience and e-commerce experience of the potential e-customer. Trust also depends on the personality of the consumer himself.  (Kim, Ferrin, & Rao, 2008).

Once trust and therefore perceived trustworthiness are achieved an e-vendor should focus on building and maintaining a relationship with its customer. Trust plays an ongoing key role in this process, next to several other factors like: satisfaction, value, loyalty, equity and word of mouth. The perceived value by a customer affects his loyalty the most and subsequently influences positive viral marketing. E-vendors should continuously try to enhance offered value to customers by adding new features to their service and new ways of saving money to keep their customer interested and therefore loyal. This is especially important because unlike brick and mortar shops, the online environment tempts customers to switch products or service suppliers at an even faster rate (Palvia, 2009).


Is all of this possible?

All these things look good in a theoretical context, but are they really true? Web 2.0 enables consumers to communicate with each other and learn from the experiences of their peers. But not all customers read the security policies and the terms and conditions every time, on every website. People are naturally lazy, so it is plausible that some will not differentiate between websites. They trust one website and think they can trust similar websites the same way. If they bought something on amazon.co.uk before, they will also buy on a similar, less known and maybe less trustworthy website, without worrying about their privacy and security. Especially if it concerns a rare product, consumers forget that “what sounds too good to be true, usually is”. Online ghost-companies sell vacations and concert-tickets at very high prices to people who will never see the product they purchase. Nowadays, almost everyone can create a website that looks professional. Unfortunately, a good looking website is no guarantee for a satisfying transaction for the customer.

Some online selling companies have no control over the entire online money transaction system. When someone fills in his VISA-number on a website, this person can get redirected to a transaction frame of a bank. In that case the e-vendor relies on the software and security capabilities of the bank. A few times a year, newspapers write about stolen credit card data and online credit card fraud. This is beyond the control of the online vendors, but it will also be reflected negatively on the image of online sellers.

Because of this, e-vendors should create a good relationship with their buyers which can lead to loyalty towards the e-vendor. When a consumer feels a strong connection between him and the company, he can play a big role in positive word-of-mouth communication. This way, he will be able to convince others to trust the online company just as he does.





Sources:

Buttner, O. B., & Goritz, A. S. (2008). Perceived trustworthiness of online shops. Journal of Consumer Behaviour , 35-50.

Dongmin, K., & Izak, B. (2010). Designs for effective implementation of trust assurances in internet stores. Communications of the ACM , 121-126.

Gefen, D., Benbadat, I., & Pavlou, P. A. (2008). A Research Agenda for Trust in Online Environments. Journal of Management Information Systems , 275–286.

Kim, D. J., Ferrin, D. L., & Rao, H. R. (2008). A trust-based consumer decision-making model in electronic commerce: The role of trust, perceived risk, and their antecedents. Decision Support Systems , 544-564.

Lim, s. H., Hur, Y., Sukho, L., & Koh, s. E. (2009). Role of trust in adoption of online auto insurance. Journal of Computer Information Systems , 151-159.

Mayer, R., Davis, J. H., & Schoorman, F. D. (1995). Integrative model of organizational trust. Acadamy of Management Review , 709-734.

Morgan, R. M., & Hunt, S. D. (1994). The Commitment-Trust Theory of Relationship Management. Journal of Marketing , 20-38.

Palvia, P. (2009). The role of trust in e-commerce relational exchange: A unified model. Elsevier , 213-220.

Pittayachawan, S., Singh, M., & Corbitt, B. (2008). A multitheoretical approach for solving trust problems in B2C e-commerce. Int. J. Networking and Virtual Organisations , 369-395.

Urbana, G. L., Amyx, C., & Lorenzon, A. (2009). Online Trust: State of the Art, New Frontiers, and Research Potential. Journal of Interactive Marketing , 179–190.

Zimmer, J. C., Arsal, R. E., Al-Marzouq, M., & Grover, V. (2010). Investigating online information disclosure: Effects of information relevance, trust and risk. Information & Management , 115–123.

Picture: http://www.crederitylabs.com