Putting a human face on e-commerce

Putting a human face on e-commerce

By Scott Simpson, Vancouver Sun

Shopping websites showing friendly faces and culturally appropriate colours have a distinct advantage over online marketers who focus exclusively on their merchandise, a researcher from Simon Fraser University has found.

Dianne Cyr, a professor in the SFU business faculty, says that shoppers are inclined to perceive e-commerce sites as more appealing and trustworthy, and as evoking both warmth and social presence when those sites include friendly human images.

Cyr, research partner Milena Head of McMaster University and two associates are basing their findings on lab tests involving 90 subjects, 30 each from Canada, Japan and Germany.

The reactions of subjects were individually catalogued, through questionnaires, interviews and via eye-tracking analysis, to gauge their reactions to a website similar to one designed by Sony.

Subtle changes were made between versions of the site, such as putting a face onto the screen of a laptop computer in a merchandise display, or showing a partial human image, or leaving the screen blank.

The paper, which is available at diannecyr.com, says “users specifically noted human images contributed to the warmth of the website, and without them the site had a ‘stark’ appearance.”

For their efforts, the authors’ work was recognized as paper of the year in the information-system world’s top research journal, Management and Information Systems.

Last week, Cyr also learned that a Senior Scholars committee for the Association for Information Systems had selected the paper as one of the best overall for 2009.

“It’s a very prestigious honour, so I’m thrilled,” Cyr, an online-shopping enthusiast herself, said in an interview at her office at SFU’s Surrey campus.

“We found, in fact, human images across all countries resulted in image appeal. It resulted, in all cases, in greater social presence. It also resulted in trust across all three countries.”

The researchers divided reactions into four categories — esthetics, emotional response, functionality and whether a viewer found additional or symbolic meaning in the images — and found some notable national differences in reaction.

“For Canada, the most important categories were esthetics, affective and functional. The only one missing was symbolism.

“When it came to the Germans, and this is a little bit stereotypical, we found in our study that the main appeal came from the functional interpretation aspect of the site.

“For the Japanese, the most important characteristic, and the only one that surfaced to any degree, was the emotional aspects of the websites.”

Cyr said there are ample opportunities for e-marketers to boost their sales by tailoring sites to suit regional tastes. One of her previous studies, involving a sampling of 30 websites each in the United States, Japan and Germany, found that North American e-marketers have lots of room for improvement. Cyr said 27 of 30 Japanese websites offered English-translation options, and 19 of 30 German sites also offered English.

“For the American website it was three out of 30 — yet when you look at the demographics in the U.S., there is a huge Hispanic population, for example.”

She said 1.5 billion people will have Internet access by 2011, with the largest growth in Russia, Brazil, India and China. By 2011, Asians will make up 42 per cent of the population with Internet access. The U.S. and Canada’s online population growth will be about three per cent more by 2011, while China’s will grow 17 per cent in the same period of time.

“If that customer retention rate is increased only five per cent it can increase profits by 95 per cent. So it’s huge,” Cyr said.

“So for these companies who want to get into those markets it’s imperative that they do some adaptation or localization of website design for those different countries.”

ssimpson@vancouversun.com