(2020) did a research with 63 participants where they studied font preference and effectiveness. The impact of typeface on readability and usability has already been studied in several previous works and the debate between serif and sans serif has been going on for a long time. In the Discussion we explain and interpret the results, ending with a Conclusion section. The results are shown in the next section. Then, in the Methods section, the development of the experiment and analysis of data are explained. In the Background section the previous work is shown and commented. The remainder of the article is structured in the following way. We also added a specific typography question to assess the typeface preference. To gather user preferences we use a questionnaire where usability, trust, loyalty and the appearance of the website are evaluated.
For the reading test we measure speed as well as reading comprehension and warn about it before the test to avoid users skipping the task.
To obtain the data we performed two tests using a prototype of an e-commerce website, one that consists on completing some tasks and a reading test where participants have to read the description of a product of the website. In our study, we test how the difference between serif and sans serif typefaces of the same family affects usability, from an objective and subjective perspective. Some studies evidence there is an difference in readability between serif and sans serif ( Rello & Baeza-Yates, 2016 Dogusoy, Cicek & Cagiltay, 2016), while others state that the difference is only in user preference ( Bernard et al., 2003 Boyarski et al., 1998).Īlthough previous works are interesting, they compare serif and sans serif typefaces of different families, which could be a bias given that it is not possible to know if the differences come from the serif/sans serif characteristic or from user preference towards one of the selected families.
We want to test whether this trend is supported by user preferences or performance on the website. Most important companies are also changing their logos to a simple sans serif text with their brand name, in contrast to the more complex logos they used to have ( Sienkiewicz, 2020). In the case of the biggest e-commerce websites such as Amazon, Ebay or Walmart 1 There is a belief that serif typefaces improve readability, but some authors consider it a myth ( Latin, 2017). Both types are preferred by users, compared to script and monospace, given their characteristics of font personality ( Sasidharan & Dhanesh, 2008). It is unclear whether serif or sans serif is more desirable. One of the parameters that affects readability, and thus usability on a website is the typeface that is used. Therefore there is a real economic incentive in attracting the user’s attention and thus, improving usability. Online websites have to compete for the user’s attention in order to increase their traffic. Time spent online has steadily increased over the past years and users become increasingly more selective regarding their website activity ( Statistics & Data, 2021). In the third quarter of 2021, users spent an average of 6 h and 58 min surfing the web ( Kemp, 2022). The importance of our research relies on how useful it is for e-commerce websites to improve usability in order to gain clients.
0 kommentar(er)
