Designing Product Listing Pages on E-Commerce Websites: An Examination of Presentation Mode and Information Format

Abstract

Web interface design is of enduring interest to researchers as online shopping on the Internet continues to grow. Prior research has shown that the design of product listing pages, where information on multiple products are displayed together to allow further exploration of any of them, has a great influence on the traffic and sales volume on a website. In this paper, we focus on two design features, presentation mode and information format, and examine their impact on users' interaction with websites. An experiment was conducted to compare text-only versus image-text presentation modes, based on the dual coding theory (DCT), and list versus array information formats, based on the proximity compatibility principle (PCP). In general, the findings support the application of the DCT and the PCP to the e-commerce domain. Specifically, the image-text presentation mode and the list information format were found to outperform the text-only presentation mode and the array information format respectively in terms of shorter information search time, better recall of brand names and product images, and more positive attitudes towards the screen design and using the website. Given the same information content, the spatial arrangement of products and the hierarchical placement of images can make a difference to users' online shopping performance and attitudes.

Keywords: ecommerce, website design, presentation mode, information format