Persuasive Design in e-Commerce

• Main Author: 朱希亮
• Other Authors: Deng, Yi-Shin
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/99612150598838904725

博士 === 國立交通大學 === 應用藝術研究所 === 102 === Persuasion is a form of communication that pervades our society. It not only guides our personal behavior, but also serves to establish, modify, and maintain our social system. The study of persuasion has a long history. The theories of persuasion are derived largely from the research areas of rhetoric, psychology, and social science. Today the topic of persuasion has been studied in various research areas, such as communication, marketing, advertising, healthcare, and environmental sustainability. With the rapid development of digital technology, the uses of computers have far beyond their original role of executing calculation. The prevalence of computing devices has made interactive technology, such as an e-commerce Web site, a tool of persuasion. Web design is critical to the success of e-commerce. Designing a usable Web site has been traditionally recognized as a key success factor to e-commerce. Several researchers suggested that though usability is still important for Web design, it is no longer enough to make a Web site engaging and effective. Web sites should be designed as vital instruments of persuasion in order to achieve their goals. This research aims at examining how e-commerce Web sites utilize persuasion principles and influence online shoppers by persuasive design. In this thesis, three studies are presented following a review on the literature about the studies of persuasion, the persuasive technology, and the persuasion principles. The first study, an evaluation on 14 shopping Web sites, was to examine how persuasion principles were leveraged by current e-commerce Web sites to influence online shoppers. The second study, a user study, was to understand users’ experiences, attitudes, and behaviors when practicing online shopping and how they react to the persuasive features on the sites. The third study, a lab experiment, was to investigate how design features on e-commerce product pages can influence their persuasiveness by applying persuasive means. The results of shopping Web sites evaluation revealed that: (1) a total of 24 persuasion tactics were used in the selected Web sites, and rewards, surface credibility, attractiveness, suggestion, and repetition were among the most prominent tactics; and (2) among the 24 utilized persuasion tactics, 4 (i.e., attractiveness, repetition, emotion, and surface credibility) were related to visual design, 9 (e.g., framing, expertise, scarcity) were related to content design, 6 (e.g., kairos, personalization, reduction) were related to function design, 1 (i.e., tailoring) was related to navigation design, 3 (i.e., suggestion, social proof, and reputed credibility) were related to both content and function, and 1 (i.e., identification) was related to both content and navigation design. The findings of the user study indicated that: (1) attractiveness, kairos, social proof, trustworthiness, and scarcity appear to be more effective in influencing online shoppers; (2) Wide product selection, fast and accurate product search facilitation, easily used interface, and security/privacy protection are minimum requirements to form a positive user attitude toward the site. What can persuade users to buy and revisit the sites is to provide more added value but not superficial enticements; and (3) users have their own strategies in coping with the persuasive attempts from shopping Web sites, and this everyday persuasive knowledge can influence the persuasive power of the tactics implemented. The results obtained from the experiment investigating the persuasiveness of product pages showed that: (1) the persuasiveness of a product page can be enhanced by appropriately applying persuasive means to the product page design; (2) the persuasiveness of a product page derived from applying persuasive means is affected by product type; (3) on the whole, the persuasive means that appeal to users’ emotions and the credibility of the product pages appeared to have greater persuasive power than that appeals to users’ logic; and (4) combining multiple persuasive means lead to greater persuasiveness than using any of them individually. The results obtained from this research contributed to better understanding of how to achieve an e-commerce system’s persuasive goal by leveraging persuasion tactics in designing a more persuasive Web site. Moreover, they offered insights into future development the knowledge management system facilitating learning, research, and practice on persuasive design.