User Loyalty Articles

Discussion and future work

The findings after the first cycle of the iterative design process depicted that users demanded an appropriate visual design that suits the topic and the findings of the first survey that 23.4% of the users liked the site because of the atmosphere having parts, which overlapped from the visual design. This was shown by the descriptions of atmosphere in the second survey in which 41% of users related the atmosphere to the visual design. The reason that the visual design made an impact was because aesthetic fidelity was achieved.

After the first cycle of the iterative design process it became clear that the participation of users would be less than expected and the concept had to be changed. Even though, the site already had the main features such as a forum and the possibility to submit own articles, the understanding of the audience was missing, which is crucial for developing an online community (Preece et al. 2004).

Therefore the goal of the website shifted to providing news and knowledge about the topic. The development was concentrated on creating more focus on the topic by providing background information and on developing an appropriate visual design. The main problem at this stage of the process was the lack of contribution of users to the content of the site. The idea section should bring more focus on the topic and give users another possibility to add content while the tutorial section was developed to guide users through the process of idea creation.

Feedback from forums in which problems with the structure of the start page of the second version of the site were mentioned were addressed by a test in which the aesthetic aspect and the scanability was tested. The test, with participants who were new to the interface, was conducted with the assumption that if users of a forum who were new to the interface were able to identify problems with the structure of the start page, the participants would be able to do that as well. The findings suggested that a more structured start page would decrease the aesthetic aspect of the page and therefore have a negative impact on the user experience while the scanability was only slightly faster on a better-structured site. During the progress of this research, comments of long-term users about the lack of structure on the start page showed that the test did not produce valid results for long-term users. It confirmed Dillon’s et al. (2001) findings that ‘evaluations based on single experiences with technology do not provide stable estimates of long-term (or even medium-term) usability.”

Certain limitations of this research must be acknowledged. Due to the complexity of user experience (Olsen, 2003) the essential aspects for the user experience, which were found, might not apply in general, especially given the specific topic and the resulting target audience. The focus on the German speaking countries, and as a result, the cultural background of users might have had an impact on the findings as well.

Second, the period of time for the field study, two months, might also be a limitation. The short period of time did not allow to establish an online community of any size in which personalised user rankings and identity played a significant role. Even though, the descriptions of the atmosphere of long-term users confirmed that it was possible to establish a “sense of community ” (Blanchard et al. 2001).

Third, because the final survey relies on data from a small group of people, five b+ user and five b- user, their personal interests in the website could have played a role in their judgements.

The result that four out of five B+ user could name the same favourite news category as in their user profile, while only one of the five B- user could, suggests that personalisation helped to create personal preferences or helped to identify them. The knowledge of a certain preference could make a user more sensitive to changes on a site and therefore have a negative impact on their loyalty.

Furthermore, the delivery of personalised content could limit the users perception of the variety of information on the site and therefore have a negative long-term effect on loyalty. Thus, future researchers should examine whether that the findings of dynamic personalisation can have an impact on user loyalty is consistent over a longer period of time. The creation of a personalisation lifecycle, which begins by creating a user profile and ends in de-personalisation, could be the framework for this future research.

The results of the final survey show that B+user consider the website as more trustworthy. Similarity, or in the case of this research content similar to the users preference can increase trust. Fogg (2003) identified credibility, which consists of trust and expertise, as a key factor for persuasive webdesign. The findings suggest that the use of personalisation can enhance the impact of persuasive webdesign. While persuasive webdesign only played a role in establishing credibility of the website. Future research should focus on the impact that personalisation can have in combination with persuasive webdesign.