The influence of visual complexity on initial user impressions: testing the persuasive model of web design

ABSTRACT

Shortly after fixating on webpages, users form initial impressions. These initial impressions influence how much users will use and return to websites. Researchers have understudied how objective design features (e.g. visual complexity) influence subjective perceptions of website content and the favorability of initial user impressions. In the present study, the influence of two dimensions of visual complexity – feature complexity and design complexity – were tested within the boundaries of the persuasive model of web design. More specifically, the study examined how visual complexity influences perceptions of visual informativeness, cues for engagement, favourable initial impressions, and behavioural intentions in a sample of young adults (N = 277). Results suggest relationships for both dimensions of visual complexity on all outcome variables using ANOVA and OLS regression procedures and that perceptions of visual informativeness and cues for engagement mediate the relationship between visual complexity and favourable initial impressions and behavioural intentions. The study offers support for the utility of the persuasive model of web design for linking objective design features with subjective design perceptions to better understand favourable initial user impressions.

KEYWORDS:

• Web design
• persuasive computing
• human-machine interface
• visual display
• visual complexity
• user psychology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Andy J. King http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2789-2550

Allison J. Lazard http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2502-2850

Notes

1 Initially, 301 people were recruited for the study. The target was 300, but one additional case was collected unintentionally. Of those 301 people, 24 were removed for analysis due to unrealistic completion times (± 3 SDs of average time; n = 17) and participants indicating they did not take their participation seriously (n = 7).

2 The intent of the study procedure was to ensure participants spent at least some time evaluating the webpage presented and not simply click through the survey. As such, our study examines initial user impressions of websites consistent with past work in web design, but exposed participants to the webpage more than research that looks at ‘first impressions’ exclusively. Research on first impressions often limits exposure to a short period of time (e.g., 500ms, see Tractinsky et al., 2006). Hence, we use the term ‘initial user impressions’ to study evaluation similar to other work interested in website design features and user evaluations that includes longer exposure times for participants to formulate an initial impression (e.g., Lazard et al., 2017).

3 The greatest available range of scores would have been from −20 to 20, as there were 20 boxes provided to participants for the thought listing task.

4 As noted earlier, the study operationalisation of complexity, while following guidelines from previous research, may have engaged only relatively low, medium, and high levels of complexity. That is, there is not at present a pre-defined threshold to determine each level of complexity, which could explain the failure to find the inverted-U relationship for feature complexity initially hypothesized.