December 6, 2015 / Leave a Comment
by Tatiana
2. Website Credibility through Information Design / Structure – 28.5%
After Design Look, the next category that people commented on in assessing credibility was the structure of the site’s information. The participant comments discussed how well or poorly the information fit together, as well as how hard it was to navigate the site to find things of interest. While information structure is often associated with usability, the comments here show how information structure has implications for credibility. Sites that were easy to navigate were seen as being more credible. Some sample comments are below:
- This site is very well organized, which lends to more credibility. — M, 33, Illinois
- Horrible site, information badly presented. They try to put everything on the front page, instead of having multiple layers of navigation.This to me suggests that they developed this thing on a whim. — M, 42, Canada
That information design affects credibility should come as no surprise. A well-organized site is the antithesis to a site that purposely confuses and misleads a user toward advertisements and other promotions.
