The experiment used five versions of a webpage created for this research.

Participants

The participants were 51 experienced internet users recruited by Sun (average level of Web experience was two years). Participants ranged in age from 22-69 (average age was 41). In an attempt to focus on “normal users,” we excluded the following professions from the analysis: webmasters, web site designers, graphic artists, graphical user interface professionals, writers, editors, computer scientists, and computer write my paper for me programmers.

We checked for effects of age and Web experience from the dependent variables mentioned in the 1st five hypotheses, but we found only differences-none significant that is negligible. Had the websites in our study been more difficult to navigate or had our tasks necessitated use of search engines or other Web infrastructure, we might have expected significant outcomes of both age and Web experience.

The experiment employed a 5-condition (promotional control, scannable, concise, objective, or combined) between-subjects design. Conditions were balanced for gender and employment status.

Experimental Materials

Called “Travel Nebraska,” your website contained information on Nebraska. We used a travel site because 1) in our earlier qualitative studies, many internet users said travel is one of their interests, and 2) travel content lent itself towards the writing that is different we desired to study. We chose Nebraska to minimize the result of prior knowledge on our measures (in recruiting participants, we screened out those who had ever lived in, or even near, Nebraska).

Each form of the Travel Nebraska site consisted of seven pages, and all versions used the hypertext structure that is same. To make certain that participants would give attention to text rather than be distracted, we used modest hypertext (with no links beyond your site) and included only three photos and another illustration. There clearly was no animation. Topics included in the site were Nebraska’s history, geography, population, places of interest, and economy. The Appendix to this paper shows areas of an example page from each condition.

The control form of your website had a style that is promotional of (for example., “marketese,”), which contained exaggeration, subjective claims, and boasting, instead of just simple facts. Today this style is characteristic of many pages on the Web.

The concise version had a writing that is promotional, but its text was much shorter. Certain less-important information was cut, bringing your message count for every page to about half compared to the corresponding page when you look at the control version. Some of the writing in this version was at the inverted style that is pyramid. However, all information users had a need to perform the desired tasks was presented in the same order in all versions of the site.

The scannable version also contained marketese, nonetheless it was written to encourage scanning, or skimming, associated with the text for information of interest. This version used bulleted lists, boldface text to highlight keywords, photo captions, shorter sections of text, and much more headings.

The objective version was stripped of marketese. It presented information without exaggeration, subjective claims, or boasting.

The combined version had shorter word count, was marked up for scannability, and was stripped of marketese.

The participant signed a videotape consent form, then was told he or she would visit a website, perform tasks, and answer several questions upon arrival at the usability lab.

The experimenter explained that he would observe from the room next door to the lab through the one-way mirror after making sure the participant knew how to use the browser. For the study, the participant received both printed instructions from a paper packet and verbal instructions through the experimenter.

The participant began at the web site’s homepage. The first two tasks were to find specific facts (found on separate pages into the site), without needing a search tool or even the “Find” command. The participant then answered Part 1 of a brief questionnaire. Next was a judgment task (suggested by Spool et al. 1997) where the participant first had to find information that is relevant then make a judgment about it. This task was followed by Part 2 of this questionnaire.

Next, the participant was instructed to invest ten full minutes learning whenever possible through the pages into the website, when preparing for a exam that is short. Finally, the participant was asked to draw in writing the structure associated with website, to your best of his / her recollection.

Each participant was told details about the study and received a gift after completing the study.

Task time was the amount of seconds it took users to locate answers for the two search tasks and one judgment task.

The 2 search tasks were to answer: “On what date did Nebraska become a state?” and “Which Nebraska city is the 7th largest, with regards to population?” The questions when it comes to judgment task were: “In your opinion, which tourist attraction would be the best one to visit? How come you believe so?”

Task errors was a percentage score in line with the number of incorrect answers users gave when you look at the two search tasks.

Memory comprised two measures through the exam: recognition and recall. Recognition memory was a share score in line with the number of correct answers without the quantity of incorrect answers to 5 multiple-choice questions. As one example, among the questions read: “that is Nebraska’s largest group that is ethnic? a) English b) Swedes c) Germans d) Irish.”

Recall memory was a percentage score on the basis of the amount of places of interest correctly recalled minus the number incorrectly recalled. The question was: “Do you remember any names of tourist attractions mentioned within the website? Please utilize the space below to list all the ones you remember.”

Time to recall site structure was the true amount of seconds it took users to draw a sitemap.

A measure that is related sitemap accuracy, was a percentage score on the basis of the wide range of pages (maximum 7) and connections between pages (maximum 9) correctly identified, without the wide range of pages and connections incorrectly identified.

Subjective satisfaction was determined from participants’ answers to a paper-and-pencil questionnaire. Some questions inquired about specific aspects of working with your website, and other questions asked for an assessment of how good certain adjectives described the site (anchored by “Describes your website very poorly” to “Describes the site very well”). All questions used 10-point Likert scales.