Abstract
Introduction
Experiment
Results
Discussion
Conclusions
Text vs. Graphical Links in an E-Commerce Website
Authors:
John Enama - jte@wam.umd.edu
Nam Le - nhl@wam.umd.edu
Nick Pomato - pomaton@wam.umd.edu
Ben Stewart - stewartb@wam.umd.edu
Abstract
E-Commerce is an ever growing area of business that shows no signs of slowing down. Everyday more and more people are buying products online. Searching for a product within an E-Commerce website is different than browsing the aisles of the local department store. When consumers enter a "cyberstore" one must traverse hyperlinks in order to find the desired product. In this study we examine how the style of hyperlinks affect the traversing of an E-Commerce website. We wondered: "Is a picture truly 'worth a thousand words?'" By employing three treatments of link styles: Textual, Graphical and Text plus Graphics, we measured the total time subjects take to search for various products, the subjects rating of ease of navigation and the number of additional pages visited by subjects. By additional pages we mean the total number of pages visited by a subject when searching for a product minus the minimum number of pages to traverse in order to find a particular product. Our study of 24 subjects produced statistically significant evidence that all three items measured were affected by the style of links on the website.
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