Efficiency, Trust, and Visual Appeal: Usability Testing through Eye Tracking

Creating a positive user experience is a fundamental element of producing a successful web page. Three important components of user experience are visual appeal, trust, and efficiency. This study extends past research by examining the effect of images of faces on the visual appeal, efficiency, and trustworthiness of a page. Data is collected using both subjective ratings and objective measurements, including eye tracking. Analysis indicates that users find a page that has images of people´s faces more appealing than a page that has no images of faces and perform tasks more quickly when there are faces present. Additionally, analysis reveals a strong positive correlation between trusting the informational content of a page and its visual appeal. This research has important implications for theory and practical applications.