Visual appeal versus usability : A quantitative analysis of the importance of visual appeal and usability in e-commerce

Unappealing websites are rejected quickly upon visiting them, while visitors spend more time on visually appealing websites before judging its reliability; but to what extent can visual appeal alone carry the success of a website, and is it so powerful that good usability can be sacrificed? This paper studies the respective importance of visual appeal and usability in e-commerce as factors, in order to determine which factor plays the bigger role in generating trust and credibility for an e-commerce site, as credibility perception is highly correlated with its visual complexity. The relation between these two factors and the likelihood to make a purchase is also discussed. Two prototypes for a fictional consumer electronics e-commerce website were created: one with good design and flawed usability, and another with flawed design and good usability. These prototypes were shown to students aged 20-25 and asked which one they found more trustworthy and which they would rather make a purchase from. With the correlation between trust and purchase intention being apparent, the design of an e-commerce website for consumer electronics should focus mainly on the visual appeal. Usability seems to have some value, however it does not seem to be of the same importance as the visual appeal of the site in regards to generating trust, and consequently customers. The prototypes were constructed in Adobe XD, demonstrated with video recordings, and sent out in a survey to 70 students