The Role of Webpage Prototypicality as a Factor of Elaboration Likelihood

A user can often be unfocused and have only limited mental resources for processing website content, with the immediately-perceivable message-independent visual design features determining the first impression and attitude towards an organization behind the website. In such situations, webpage prototypicality – how much a webpage resembles the webpage that the user imagines when thinking about a specific website genre in a particular business domain – is a peripheral cue of high design quality that affects user attitude. This paper develops an integrated theoretical model to describe the effects of webpage prototypicality as a part of the elaboration likelihood model. An eye-tracking study is planned to investigate an interaction of prototypicality with message strength and external cognitive load and resulting effects on user attitude towards organizations. The results may inform decisions on the balance between message strength and visual features and whether company websites should copy market leaders or try to stand out