UX University

At the second edition of UX University, Hilde Voorveld spoke about whether interactivity on brand websites influences consumersʼ brand experience. Hilde is a PhD candidate in the subject of persuasive communication at the ASCoR (Amsterdam School of Communications Research), University of Amsterdam.

In the ever changing media landscape, brand websites have become an important tool for large companiesʼ marketing departments to communicate their brandsʼ values. Brand websites often have a large variety of functionalities. Does all this interactivity on websites have an impact on how consumers perceive a brand?

Interactivity

The key difference between the internet and old fashioned media such as newspapers and television lies in interactivity. In literature, interactivity has been described as ʻThe degree to which two or more communicating parties can act on each other, on the communication medium, and on the messages and the degree to which such influences are synchronizedʼ (Liu & Shrum, 2002). From this definition, three dimensions of interactivity can be deduced: two-way communication, active control and synchronity.

Actual interactivity vs perceived interactivity

Interactivity on a website is good for persuasion, yet it is not merely the technical aspect of interactivity that encourages persuasion. When measuring interactivity, we should make a distinction between, on the one hand, technical or actual interactivity obtained by counting the number of interactive elements on a website, and, on the other hand, perceived interactivity. Hilde investigated the relation between these types of interactivity.

Methods of research

To measure actual interactivity on the websites, a two-level deep content analysis of 66 Dutch and 66 American websites has been conducted. Example elements of actual interactivity include online chatting and feedback mechanisms (two-way communications), skip intro and live customer service (synchronicity) and choice of language and choice of language (active control). To measure perceived interactivity, the team held a survey amongst students about the same test websites.

All of this had to happen in a rather small timespan, to avoid websites changing in the middle of the research. It has been conducted on ʻbusiness to consumerʼ websites only, excluding all applications with user generated content, e-commerce websites and search engines.

Conclusion

The research proved that there is indeed incongruence between actual interactivity and perceived interactivity. The respondents that were questioned called websites, that were just little interactive in the technical sense of the word, very interactive. Simply adding interactive features does thus not guarantee a high level of perceived interactivity.

Someone in the audience wondered whether there is a relationship between people liking a particular brand and people perceiving a brands website as interactive. Hilde explained that the literature on the subject suggests it is actually the other way around.

Thanks to Hilde for the presentation and we are looking forward to the next edition of UX University.

PS: You can still participate in Hilde’s research by filling out her questionnaire.