The experiment used five versions of a web site created for this study.
Participants
The participants were 51 experienced Web users recruited by Sun (average level of Web experience was 2 years). Participants ranged in age from 22-69 (average age was 41). So as to focus on “normal users,” we excluded the professions that are following the analysis: webmasters, Web designers, graphic designers, graphical user interface professionals, writers, editors, computer scientists, and computer programmers.
We checked for outcomes of age and Web experience regarding the dependent variables mentioned in the first five hypotheses, but we found only negligible differences-none significant. Had the sites inside our study been more challenging to navigate or had our tasks necessitated use of search engines or any other Web infrastructure, we might have expected significant ramifications of both age and Web experience.
The experiment employed a 5-condition (promotional control, scannable, concise, objective, or combined) between-subjects design. Conditions were balanced for employment and gender status.
Experimental Materials
Called “Travel Nebraska,” your website contained information on Nebraska. We used a travel site because 1) within our earlier qualitative studies, many Web users said travel is one of their interests, and 2) travel content lent itself to the different writing styles we wanted to study. Read more