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Demographic Differences in Preferred Web Site Content

Demographic Differences in Preferred Web Site Content Ann Chadwick-Dias, Donna Tedesco & Tom Tullis Fidelity Investments Fidelity Center for Applied Technology, Human Interface Design 82 Devonshire Street, V4A Boston, MA 02109-3614 {annmarie.chadwick-dias, donna.tedesco, tom.tullis}@fidelity.com

ABSTRACT Users of different ages and gender were asked to physically “build” their ideal financial services homepage by choosing pieces of actual Web page content that were printed on magnetic paper. By sticking the pieces of content within a simulated Web browser that was fixed on to a magnetic white board, users could build their homepage. Both age and gender were demonstrated to affect the content that users chose to place on their homepage. For example, males added more news-type content, females added more pictures, and older users were more likely to add a help feature. More research is needed to learn more about how age and gender affect Web site preferences.

INTRODUCTION Research strongly supports that age and gender influence people’s preferences in a variety of situations including learning style [1], music [6, 7], and occupations [11] to name only a few. Additional research has demonstrated that age or gender can also affect how people communicate [2], their color preferences [5], and memory [4]. It is therefore not difficult to imagine that age and gender might also influence what content users prefer to see on various Web sites. While some studies have examined these potential differences [3, 8, 9, 10] none have generated many clear answers in terms of what specific features or Web page content are preferred by different age groups or genders.

OVERVIEW We wanted to learn what content users of different ages and gender would prefer on their “ideal” financial services homepage. To learn this, we developed a method that allows users to physically “build” their ideal homepage using pieces of actual Web page content that were printed on magnetic paper. Users chose their preferred content and then stuck each piece of chosen content on to a magnetic whiteboard that had a simulated Web browser window. We removed all the references to company names, gray-scaled the images, cut up the homepage images into logical pieces, and placed all the pieces on whiteboards from which the users could select to build their page. For this study, the content from six financial services home pages were cut up and resulted in a total of 105 individual content pieces from which users could construct their ideal site. Data was analyzed to learn whether age or gender had any influence on what content users chose.

METHODS The homepages of 6 financial services Web sites, including our company’s, were captured and saved as images. Each homepage image was then “anonymized” - meaning all references to the company’s name were removed. The images were then gray-scaled and cut up into individual, logical pieces. After completing this process, a total of 105 individual

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content pieces were produced. The content from all the sites was then printed on to magnetic paper and placed on to one of two magnetic white boards.

Figure 1: Simulated Web Browser and Web Content Pieces Content that could be easily grouped together was placed in groups (separated by black tape with no labels) on one whiteboard. The remainder of ungrouped content was placed on the remaining whiteboard. The groupings included navigation, charts, pictures, login, open an account, footers, quotes, and other navigation (like global navigation, site map, etc.). For content that could not be easily categorized, whole pieces were still kept intact and placed on the general content whiteboard. The third white board had a simulated browser window with no content. Users were asked to choose the content they preferred from the 2 whiteboards and stick it on to the third whiteboard within the browser window area to “build” their ideal financial services homepage. For more details on this method, see Tedesco, Chadwick-Dias, and Tullis (2004).

Figure 2: Example of User-Built Homepage

Participants

Thirty participants were recruited and balanced by age, gender, and overall level of PC/Web experience. PC/Web experience was measured using a 5-pt scale (0 to 4) on three different criteria: frequency of use (how often they use the Web), long-term usage (how long they have used the web), and types of activities performed on the Web (the more activities they did, the higher the score). These scores were then added together to provide an overall PC/Web experience rating, which could be from 0 to 12. Age was controlled by placing participants into one of the following age groups: Under-40, 40-64, 65+. There were 10 participants in each age group.

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# Females Under-40 40-64 65+ Table 1: Demographics

# Males

Average Experience

5 4 5

9.4 9.7 9.3

5 6 5

Participants were recruited via email and phone and asked to come to our usability labs to participate in a 45 minute usability session. All of the participants had to have an online brokerage account that they had used within the last 6 months. None of the participants were employees of our company. They received a $50 gift check as compensation.

Usability Session Structure

Each session was scheduled for 45 minutes. When participants arrived at the lab, they were given a consent form and background questionnaire. The moderator then escorted them into the testing room and provided a brief description of how the study would be conducted. Participants were shown the 3 whiteboards and were told that all the content from 6 financial services homepages was anonymized, printed on magnetic paper, cut up, and then placed onto the whiteboards. Participants were asked to take content from the whiteboards and stick the content on to the third whiteboard within the simulated browser window. Participants were told they could use any combination of content as well as creating their own content using blank pieces of magnetic paper and scissors. During the session, participants were allowed to take breaks as needed and work at their own pace without talking aloud. At the end of each session, the moderator came back to the testing room and gave the participants the opportunity to discuss the homepage they built.

RESULTS There were significant differences observed between both age group and gender regarding which content pieces were chosen to be part of participants’ ideal financial services homepages. Although there were also many commonalities between what each demographic chose the results reported here highlight those pieces that had significant differences between the demographic groups.

Gender Differences Differences in the content that males and females chose were noted. Analysis was performed on differences between gender for individual pieces (i.e. did males choose a specific piece more than females) and groups of similar content (i.e. did females choose more pictures than males).

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Males were more likely to add news content.

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Figure 3. Example News Content Piece Males more often chose news-type content to place on their homepage. They also placed more of this type of content on their homepage than females. For the specific news content piece shown above (Figure 3), 36% of the males put this piece on their homepage as opposed to only 6% of females. Males were more likely to choose this piece than females, χ2=4.05, df=1, p