Animated banner graphic colors: The effect on attention and perceived usability between American and Thai users

The success of E-commerce businesses may depend on the effectiveness of supporting the cultural differences of users from different parts of the world. With the rapid growth of business competition on the Internet, companies need effective advertising media to attract potential customers. In principle, this study attempts to inspect the cross-cultural differences in the usability of designing effective E-commerce Web sites. In particular, the study investigates the effects of animated banner graphic colors on attention and perceived usability of users from two cultural groups. Sixty American and sixty Thai freshman university students were recruited to participate in this study in their respective countries. The experiment employs a three-way split-plot design with one between-subjects factor and two repeated-measures factors. The between-subjects factor contains two cultural groups, American and Thai. The two repeated-measures factors are background banner color with six levels and font banner color with two levels. The participants searched for target words from text on Web pages that contain three animated banners. Each participant performed twelve treatment tasks and one control task.; The findings lead to the conclusion that users across cultures tend to ignore banners when they look for specific information on highly informative Web pages that include animated banner graphics. Nevertheless, the study suggests the influence of culture on overall performance and retention regardless of differences in banner color combination. Additionally, cultural differences exist in self-reports on the use of banner color. Based on the results of this experimental study, the conceptual model entitled the model of cross-cultural interface development is constructed. The model broadens the importance of cultural factors in developing interfaces in the context of technology to any media which users across cultures interact with. In short, the model suggests that any interface may be first internationalized by considering characteristics of user, goal, and interaction media. The interface is then localized for a specific cultural group by considering three major cultural factors: preferential factors, symbolic factors, and value factors. The necessity of usability evaluation is apparent to evaluate both interfaces on preferential, cognitive, and behavioral outcomes.