Evaluating a website’s credibility

A couple years back, Stanford performed a large study to determine how people evaluate a website’s credibility. Take a look below and see different factors influence your website visitors.

(Categories with less than 3% incidence are not in this table.)

	Percent (of 2,440 comments)	Comment Topics (addressing specific credibility issue)
1.	46.1%	Design Look
2.	28.5%	Information Design/Structure
3.	25.1%	Information Focus
4.	15.5%	Company Motive
5.	14.8%	Information Usefulness
6.	14.3%	Information Accuracy
7.	14.1%	Name Recognition and Reputation
8.	13.8%	Advertising
9.	11.6%	Information Bias
10.	9.0%	Writing Tone
11.	8.8%	Identity of Site Operator
12.	8.6%	Site Functionality
13.	6.4%	Customer Service
14.	4.6%	Past Experience with Site
15.	3.7%	Information Clarity
16.	3.6%	Performance on Test by User
17.	3.6%	Readability
18.	3.4%	Affiliations

Just the look of the site made up 46.1% of the comments! The next closest was over 10% away. This is a dead giveaway that sites like craigslist are the exception to the rule, not the rule.

Your website really does need to show your best side. Not just because a web designer tells you so, but because the research shows that it really does make a difference.