The effect of prototypicality on webpage aesthetics, usability, and trustworthiness

The user expects a specific-category webpage to have a look-and-feel specific to that category. For instance, unlike university homepages, online-shop webpages typically feature relatively less text, a long grid-like structure listing products, and numerous functional elements for product search, filtering, and recommendation. Ensuring that a webpage meets user expectations enhances its prototypicality and has a positive impact on the user’s impression of the webpage. Despite the potential impact on users, the concept of webpage prototypicality has not been fully explored or extensively employed in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). This paper addresses this gap by conducting a user study with 1530 participants to investigate webpage prototypicality. The study revealed a strong correlation between prototypicality and webpage visual aesthetics, perceived pre-use usability, and trustworthiness. Notably, the direct effect of prototypicality on trustworthiness outweighed the indirect effects through aesthetics and usability. Overall, prototypicality, aesthetics, and usability collectively accounted for 29% and 68% of the variance in trustworthiness, depending on the webpage category. These findings emphasize the importance of embracing prototypicality within the field of HCI, encouraging its wider adoption.