What Makes Web Sites Credible? A Report on a Large Quantitative Study

captology.stanford.edu

10 points·mshafrir··7 comments

Webcredibility.org seems to be down for a year but make sure to check out the archive.org version of their guidelines:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=841711

According their findings having an unavailable website is seriously damaging their credibility.

A paper from 8 years ago? Seriously?

Totally agree. I remember reading this study when I was in school. It is too bad they don't keep updating the survey. This kind of empirical data is really helpful, but hard to make use of now, nearly a decade on with all the innovation that has occurred.

IMHO not many of these factors have changed. Which ones don't you agree with? Which ones you'd like to add?

You do yourself a grave disservice if you discard information out of hand simply because it isn't new or part of the latest fad.

Yes. Technology changes quickly, it is true but the principles of communication do not because humans and human wiring don't change nearly as fast as technology does. Newer =/= better.

Maybe my reaction was too brief for some, allow me re-phrase:

Web design is a fast-moving field and the topic of credibility and communication of web sites remains key. In this context, I question the 8 year old research as being the best valuable we can get. A lot of work is done in this area and our collective attention is better directed to state of the art.

It would be great to have a more up-to-date version of this research. Unfortunately it isn't on http://www.webcredibility.org/ -- the site referred in the paper.

http://www.useit.com/ is a good resource and they are others.

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