Xarg blog Archive

I found the report How Do People Evaluate a Web Site's Credibility? Results from a Large Study to be pretty interesting. The headline result, "design matters more than anything else" should not be a huge surprise. I guess the question in my mind is does credibility matter?

It reminds me of the article I read (which sadly I can no longer find) about how a large site tested various different banner ads and found the most grotesque ones had the highest click through rates. The designers were horrified by it and ads like that certainly can't do much for credibility but that was what drove revenues at the time. Maybe now that people are increasingly blind to banners it is credibility and brand awareness that matter more than simply screaming for attention.