Hypothesis 1。1。 When compared to small images, large images on an e-commerce web interface will  lead to greater user attention。

Hypothesis 1。2。 When compared to small  images,  large images on an e-commerce web interface will  enhance user memory performance。 Reeves and Nass claim that, in the real world,  due  to constant visual information overload, people have  adapted to ignore the importance of visual fidelity。 Likewise, they claimed and found that  visual  fidelity  had no effect on attention or memory in traditional  media。 However, it is likely that visual  fidelity  will  have an effect in a commercial setting such as an  e-commerce web site。 In Reeves and Nass’ research,  they state that shoppers at the appliance  store might like as sharp a picture as possible on a  television set, but as a psychological criterion for  believability or immersion, visual fidelity may be  overrated。 All their work in this area involved media  and content of a non-commercial nature。 Since we  are testing this concept in a commercial setting, we  believe that visual fidelity will indeed have an effect on users or shoppers。 Therefore, we propose:

Hypothesis 2。1。 When compared to low visual fidelity images, high visual fidelity images on an EC web interface will lead to greater user attention。

Hypothesis 2。2。 When compared to low visual  fidelity  images, high visual fidelity images on an EC web interface enhance user memory performance。 Motion, like image size, is one of the primitive cues we have about the environment。 

4 Experimental design

A laboratory experiment was conducted to test the proposed hypotheses。 A total of eight interfaces  were  developed to test for the main effects and all  combinations of the interactions of the three independent variables, namely, image size (small, big),  visual fidelity (low, high), and motion (static, moving)。 Subjects were then randomly assigned to one of  eight  interfaces。

4 。1。 Design of the interface

HTML (HyperText Markup Language), PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor), and Javascript were used to develop the web site。 The look and feel of  the interface was designed to resemble actual e-commerce web sites as closely as possible。

The home page lists the shopping departments of Shop。com along with typical  components of an e-commerce web site。  This hierarchy continues until a specific product page is displayed。 Three products, a book, a digital camera, and a Personal Digital Assistant, were used in this  study because we wanted to take repeated measures  of the effect of the interface components for each  subject to see if the impact of the interface features  change over time。 Also, we wanted to  investigate  whether the product itself would have an effect on  the subjects’responses。

These products can be classified according to their different attributes。 Nelson identified two different types of attributes, search attributes and experience attributes。 Search attribute information can be collected from secondhand sources, such as advertising, catalogs, or word of mouth, without having to try products。 For example, price and weight belong to this category。 Experience attributes are those that can be evaluated only by use of products, e。g。 touch and feel。 In this study the camera and PDA have both search and experience attributes, whereas the book is mainly described by its search attributes。

4 。2。 Image size

Most studies on the effects of size use relative differences。 Reeves and Nass’ argue that the idea is to maximize the difference。 Thus, in the (large) image size condition, the images are roughly four times as big both horizontally and vertically than the images that are in the (small) image size condition, large images are roughly 16 times bigger than small images。 These dimensions were utilized to ensure that the users can actually see the small images and that the images are not obtrusive in the large image size condition。