This research supports the hypothesis that “a picture is worth a thousand words” when it comes to website design. Drawing on two frameworks, the hierarchy of effects (HOE) model and impression formation theory, the authors used college women to show (1) how homepage design factors impact visual fluency, (2) how visual fluency impacts consumer preferences, and (3) whether brand familiarity or product aesthetics have a material impact on the consumer response to a homepage (p. 240).

The findings of this study should help retailers and researchers to gauge the effectiveness of homepage design in the future. The expected findings are that an image-based (as opposed to a text-based) website is more effective in getting people to browse the website regardless of brand familiarity or aesthetic value of the image. The authors claim that their findings support the HOE model, that is, consumers respond to advertising in three hierarchical steps: cognition, affect, and conation (p. 241). In brief, a positive perception of a website will influence the intention and ultimately the buying behavior of the user.

The degree of information and usability perceived by the user determines how much time is spent on the site regardless of brand familiarity. First impressions are made within 50 ms, which leads to a “halo effect” and confirmation bias that remain in place even when contrary evidence appears at a later stage. The study included 658 (out of 4000 invited participants) female college students accustomed to online apparel shopping.

Criticism of the study is threefold. First, the sampling size and the nature of the selected group are very limited (the authors admitted as much in their summary). More importantly, the HOE model has dramatically changed over time due to the rapid development of information technology and the ways people communicate and socialize. Indeed, what has occurred is “a paradigm shift from product-oriented marketing to consumer-oriented marketing or people-oriented marketing. Therefore, the variables in the hierarchy of effects model need to be updated in respond[ing] to the latest developments” [1]. Third, to investigate user behavior when it comes to website effectiveness, a discussion of how websites are read and perceived must be included. According to Nielsen and Pernice [2], “eyetracking visualization show that users often read web pages in an F-shaped pattern: two horizontal stripes are followed by a vertical stripe.” How does this phenomenon impact homepage design? More research is needed as the complexity of web sites increases and social as well as mobile technologies play an even greater part in cyberspace.