More Research Reports (2001)

Search: Visible and Simple
Alertbox, Jakob Nielsen: Search is the user's lifeline for mastering complex websites. The best designs offer a simple search box on the home page and play down advanced search and scoping. We recently studied a large group of people as they shopped on various e-commerce sites. Their search success rate was: 1st query 51%, 2nd 32% and 3rd 18%. In other words, if users don't find the result with their first query, they are progressively less and less likely to succeed with additional searches. Many users don't even bother: In our study, almost half the users whose first search failed gave up immediately. Users almost never look beyond the second page of search results. It is thus essential that your search prioritize results in a useful way and that all the most important hits appear on the first page. (2001-05-27)

Stanford Web Credibility Project
Our goal is to understand what leads people to believe what they find on the Web. We hope this knowledge will enhance Web site design and promote future research on Web credibility. The site contains several research reports on Web site credibility.  (2001-05-27)

Making the case for IT
InfoWorld: The core question in our survey asked respondents simply how valuable IT was to their company. The majority of respondents (70 percent) said IT was absolutely essential to their company's business objectives, whereas only one person in 200 said that IT didn't affect the company's business objectives at all. (2001-05-27)

Rendering Effective Route Maps: Improving Usability Through Generalization
Route maps, which depict a path from one location to another, have emerged as one of the most popular applications on the Web. Current computer-generated route maps, however, are often very difficult to use. In this paper we present a set of cartographic generalization techniques specifically designed to improve the usability of route maps. Our generalization techniques are based both on cognitive psychology research studying how route maps are used and on an analysis of the generalizations commonly found in handdrawn route maps. We describe algorithmic implementations of these generalization techniques within LineDrive, a real-time system for automatically designing and rendering route maps. Feedback from over 2200 users indicates that almost all believe LineDrive maps are preferable to using standard computer-generated route maps alone. (2001-05-27)

Almost 50 percent of online purchases aborted
Computer User: A report just issued suggests that up to 50 percent of online transactions are aborted before their completion. The primary reason for this volume of dropped transactions, the report by Zona Research says, is poor Web performance. While the research concludes that $21 billion of the $25 billion in lost business -- 82 percent -- can be blamed on slow-loading Web pages, another 8 percent of revenue losses were due to transmission errors caused by the Internet's infrastructure. (2001-05-13)

Understand Online Message Dissemination
First Monday: This paper reports on the analysis "send-this-story-to-a-friend" data from ESPN.com. The researchers found that the number of times stories are sent out represent a miniscule proportion of visits to the site. With 6.1 million unique visitors to ESPN in February, only 5,500 stories were sent to a friend.  (2001-05-13)

E-tailers Benefit When Customers Run the Show
E-Commerce Times: According to this article on web site personalization, a Harvard Business Review study found that 93 percent of those surveyed have indeed customized at least one Web site for themselves, and 25 percent have customized more than one. However, 42 percent of respondents said they saw no real advantages of a Web site deciding their preferences or interests for them.  (2001-05-13)

Personalization and Privacy Survey
Personalization Consortium: The results of a March survey of more than 4,500 Internet users on the topic of balancing personalization and privacy. 94% of the respondents reported that they are registered on at least one web site. 80% were either neural or agreed that web site personalization is helpful and convenient.   (2001-05-13)

Pop-up Internet Ads: More Eyeballs -- and More Frowns
A new report from Statistical Research, Inc. (SRI) shows that pop-up Internet advertisements are 50% more likely to be noticed than banner ads, but also that they are 100% more likely to be considered intrusive. Nearly half (49%) of active Internet users "agreed strongly" that pop-up ads get noticed (versus 33% for banner ads); but 62% felt strongly that pop-ups interfere with their reading or use of a Web page (compared to 31% for banners). Respondents also were less likely to view companies that use pop-ups as being industry leaders.  (2001-05-13)

Valuable Consumers Demand Personalization
Cyberatlas: Frequent online purchasers are more likely to spend more money at Web sites that offer personalization, according to survey conducted by Cyber Dialogue. More than half (56 percent) of the respondents said they are more likely to purchase from a site that allows personalization, and 63 percent are more likely to register at a site that allows personalization or content customization. The implication for online sellers is that the most desirable customers increasingly want to receive improved service or relevant benefits from Web sites that can remember their personal information and subsequently tailor that information to their personal needs and interests. (2001-05-13)

What Causes Customers to  Buy on Impulse?
User Interface Engineering: Impulse purchases represent almost 40% of all the money spent on e-commerce sites, according to recent tests we conducted. What drives shoppers to make these impulse purchases? It isn't price, but rather it's tied to design elements of the site itself. (2001-05-06)

Secondary Windows in Online Help - What Do Users Really Make of Them?
STC Usability Newsletter: "In conducting these two tests, Digitext set out to investigate how the discretionary use of secondary windows might contribute to the overall goal of easy-to-use Help systems. The overall conclusion is that there is little reason to assign specific types of topic to different secondary windows. However, it can be helpful to use a secondary window for a link to a sub-procedure or layer of additional detail, as long as the current window remains visible on screen when the new window appears. In this case, the two windows show a valid relationship between the two topics, and the user is able easily to return to the main topic after completing the sub-procedure." (2001-04-29)

Brand Web Sites Come Up Short with Many Consumers
Cyberatlas: According to this report, a Information Resources Inc. study found that: most consumers visit manufacturer Web sites to find company contact and/or basic product information, and that consumer packaged goods companies are generally satisfying these needs. Two of the top features consumers want in a brand Web site are an 800 number (63 percent) and an e-mail address (61 percent) with which to communicate with the company. These are offered by 69 percent and 81 percent of companies, respectively. More than half (56 percent) of consumers look for basic product information on a brand Web site and 91 percent of manufacturers offer this. While 38 percent of manufacturers' Web sites offer games and activities and 41 percent feature lifestyle information, the survey showed that only 12 percent and 27 percent of online consumers, respectively, want such "community" offerings. (2001-04-29)

Testing Web Sites with Eye-Tracking
User Interface Engineering:  "Thanks to some recent usability studies we conducted using an eye-tracking system, we now have real evidence of where users actually look when they view a web page. It’s clear that users quickly learn to look where they expect to find content. They also quickly learn to avoid areas where they don’t see—or expect—what they’re looking for, including banner ads and parts of the page outside the central area." The study found" "...users typically looked first in the center area, then in the left panel, then in the right column. Users spent an average of 11 seconds on each of the pages..."

The 3Cs of Critical Web Use: Collect, Compare, Choose
Alertbox, Jakob Nielsen: According to a recent critical incident analysis, users' most important Web tasks involve collecting and comparing multiple pieces of information, usually so they can make a choice. In the study, the primary reasons for the respondents' important use of the Web was classified as:

Seize the Occasion: Usage-Based Segmentation for Internet Marketers
enews: A new study ... shows that consumers' online behavior and their responses to online marketing vary greatly depending on what they're doing at a particular time. Consider this analogy: Web users ignore banner ads when they're intent on finding specific information fast, just as drivers don't pay attention to billboards when they're speeding to the emergency room. Once the deep link is understood between consumers' activity during a specific session and their receptiveness to marketing at that time, marketers can design and deliver better messages for every occasion. This article describes 7 types of Web usage behavior: Quickies, Just the Facts, Single Mission, Do it Again, Loitering, Information Please and Surfing.  (2001-04-22)

Online Financial Services Falling Behind the Phone
Cyberatlas: A Jupiter consumer survey found that customer service (52 percent) and federally insured accounts (59 percent) are the most important qualities consumers look for when choosing a financial services provider. Only 7 percent of consumers cite availability of promotions as important criteria for selecting a financial provider. While many financial institutions focus on features, consumers' demands largely fall in two basic categories: trust and convenience, and Jupiter analysts caution that new features produce only complexity, which is fundamentally at odds with the desired goal of customer convenience. (2001-04-22)

Internet Can't Match Branch Banking
Cyberatlas: While 39 percent of U.S. households say their primary financial services institution offers online banking, only 18 percent have used it. That number drops to 13 percent when respondents were asked to indicate whether they have used online banking within the past month. Among online banking users, 85 percent said that they have used a brick-and-mortar branch within the past month. (2001-04-22)

Customers crave simpler financial services
CNet: According to this report and a survey of financial services web sites: "...the majority of consumers polled said what matters most to them in a financial services company is the quality of its customer service and whether it offers federally insured accounts. The biggest drawback to offering more services is that more is often less when it comes to navigating Web sites, Jupiter said, adding that new services often lead to a cluttered and confusing site. (2001-04-15)

Not All Site Features Turn Online Shoppers Into Buyers
PricewaterhouseCoopers: Search functions are the most popular online shopping feature. The majority of online shoppers - 77 percent - have used a search function while shopping online and most of these users are satisfied enough with search functions to use them on a regular basis. After search engines, the group of online shopping site features used next most often and next most regularly have to do with product information - including zoom in images, product reviews, and in-stock status. (2001-04-15)

The Web's never-ending trends
John C. Dvorak, ZDNet Tech Infobase: According to Dovarak's analysis of web site stats:

  1. Change is good. Michael Miller was the first to observe that each redesign of a site creates a larger audience.
  2. Links within a page never get clicked on. If five percent of readers click a link on a page, it's a miracle.
  3. If the link to the first photo attracts 100 percent of the audience, the second photo will attract 50 percent. The third gets 40 percent, the next, 30 percent, then all remaining photos attract 25 percent of the audience. (2001-03-25)

Portals' E-commerce Efforts Receive Poor Ratings
Internet News: Cluttered sites, distracting banner ads, inadequate search features and confusing privacy policies jaded the shopping experience at several leading Internet portals, according to a study conducted by Consumer Reports Online. (2001-03-25)

CIO Magazine Cyber Behavior Research Center
These surveys listed on this page are an attempt to discern what impact existing behaviors and beliefs have on shaping the Web, and what new behaviors and beliefs may be emerging. (2001-03-25)

Harnessing the Power of Online Pricing
According to this article on a recent internet retailing study by McKinsey & Comapany. most buyers do very little cross-shopping. The report cited data showing that 89 percent of online book shoppers and 84 percent of toy shoppers bought at the first site they visited. However, the study found that "price changes that appear capricious or, worse, deceptive can cause long-term damage to a company's price proposition." (2001-03-25)

Online shoppers avoid fancy features
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) has found that most online shoppers do not use the extra features, or "bells and whistles," on ecommerce sites. Only 19 percent of shoppers had ever filled out an online wish list, for example, and only 13 percent of those had ever forwarded such a list to friends or family members. Features such as live customer service, personalization, and product comparison guides were also unlikely to be used or to tempt shoppers into buying. (2001-03-11)

Tabular and Textual Methods for Selecting Objects from a Group
The accurate formulation of boolean expressions is a notorious problem in programming languages and database query tools. This paper studies the ways that untrained users naturally express and interpret queries, revealing some of the underlying reasons why this task is so difficult. Among the study's findings are: people interpret the word AND to mean either conjunction or disjunction depending on context, the scope to which they attribute the word NOT depends on whether the subsequent operator is AND or OR, and they often ignore parenthesis. Therefore, relying on these words and symbols for query formulation will result in poor usability. A tabular query form is proposed that avoids the need to name the operators, provides a clear distinction between conjunction and disjunction, and makes grouping more explicit. Comparing the tabular language with textual boolean expressions, the study finds that untrained users perform better when they express their queries in the tabular language, and about equally well when interpreting queries written in either language. We conclude that systems may benefit by adopting a tabular notation for query formulation. (2001-03-11)

12 Minutes To Search Rage
Search Engine Watch: How long is too long until searching the web drives you crazy? Apparently, 12 minutes, according to a new survey commissioned by search engine WebTop.com. The survey found that 71 percent of Internet users say they get frustrated when searching, and it takes about 12 minutes, on average, for them to feel this search rage. The survey also found that 86 percent of users thought searching could be made more efficient, and that more than one-third of users (36 percent) spend more than 2 hours per week searching the web. (2001-02-18)

Search Engines, Browsers Still Confusing Many Web Users
CyberAtlas: A two-year study by Alexa Research has revealed, that based on their searching habits, an alarming number of Web users are not particularly efficient at reaching their online destinations. Rather than entering a URL into the address field of their Web browsers, millions of Internet users enter the name of the site they want into the search box of their start-up homepage or other search engine. This study shows that for many, there's a conceptual misunderstanding of how to effectively navigate the Web. Some people think that their homepage is the Web, that they have to go through their homepage in order to get to the site they want. (2001-02-18)

Fuschia and Lime Green Buttons?
According to the CHI-Web Listserv posting: "...we changed the functional button labeled "Order Photo Prints" from a standard button (that looked like all the others) to obnoxiously-colored blinking buttons (requested by Marketing). We tested various obnoxious buttons and gathered click-through statistics on them. Much to my chagrin, we discovered that the more obnoxious the button, the higher the click-through. Fuchsia and lime green with blinking text were by far the winners. YUCK!!!" (2001-02-18)

Developing Schemas for the Location of Common Web Objects
Usability News: "This study examined both novice and experienced participants' schemas for the typical location of common web objects. Basically, both novice and experienced participants had similar schemas for location of these objects. The results are as follows: 1) the internal web page links are expected to be located on the upper left side of a page, 2) the external web page links are generally expected to be located on the right side or lower left side of a page, 3) the "back to homepage" link is generally expected to be located at the top-left corner and the bottom-center of a page, 4) the internal search engine is generally expected to be located at the upper-center of a page, and 5) advertisements are generally expected to be located at the top of a web page." (2001-02-04)

Designing for Information Foragers
ITG Internetworking: "This paper explains and elaborates a behavioral model for understanding how people look for information on the Web. The first half briefly reviews a wide range key research to provide a broader context for understanding human information seeking behavior and a starting point for further exploration. The second part proposes a model for organizing design ideas based on this research." (2001-02-04)

Patients Look to Net to Help with Medical Care
This article describes a recent survey that found "A majority of the online population (57 percent) think it is somewhat likely that the Internet will help reduce or eliminate frustrations associated with visits to their doctors, according to a survey by Harris Interactive for ARiA Marketing and iMcKesson. The research also found that 81 percent of the online population would like to receive e-mail reminders for preventive care, 83 percent would like follow-up e-mails after visits to doctors, 84 percent would like for for their doctors to be able to access and monitor their lab tests online)." (2001-01-21)

Browsers or Buyers in Cyberspace? An Investigation of Factors Influencing Electronic Exchange
This study found that: 
1. "price competitiveness and ease of canceling orders, affect the frequency of purchases on the Internet" 
2. "...an average consumer is not as concerned about the security of electronic exchanges or privacy issues. The concern over security has decreased over the years..."
3. "...consumers who are primarily motivated by convenience are more likely to make purchases online. Those who value social interactions are less interested in the Internet use for shopping and thus shop less frequently on the Internet..." (2001-01-21)

Shoppers Say E-Commerce Was Good for Them
According to this report, 90% of online shoppers were satisfied with their experience. 63 percent did encounter some difficulties, but the problems appear to be fewer and had little impact on overall satisfaction. The demographics of online buyers looked more like mainstream US buyers than ever before in 2000. More than half of the purchasers were female; more than one-third were older than 45; and half had incomes below $60,000. Shipping fees remain the major reason people did not shop online." (2001-01-14)

In Weird Math of Choices, 6 Choices Can Beat 600
While is article is not about software it does reveal some interesting information about human behavior. While we seem to like lots of choices, many choices seems to reduce our motivation to buy or to appreciate what we buy. One study found that: "while nearly 30 percent of the shoppers given 6 choices subsequently bought a jar of jam, only 3 percent of those offered 24 varieties made a purchase." (2001-01-14)

The Holidays Online
Pew Research Center Report: This report is based on interview with 3,493 American adults; of whom 2,038 were internet users. The study found that 24% of Internet users purchased gifts online, but 53% sent emails with holiday messages and 32% sent e-cards. From the responses to these and other questions, the researchers identified 12 trends in the use of the Internet, particularly related to finding information about products and making purchases. While the report is mostly about holiday gift buying, it is also reveals some interesting information about human behavior. (2001-01-07)

More Research Reports (2000)