Are websites credible?
Week 12 – Learning Portfolio item 1 – Q1
Website credibility is a serious issue in the modern age of computing and technology. As we are now using the internet in a diversity of different ways it is important to be to inspect a credible website upon arrival.
Whatever your activity is on the web whether its shopping or research, it is important for the website to establish credibility to earn your trust. As (Doncor, 2011) explains, a website design be correctly targeted against a market audience. The design will not only attract them but influence them to become your customer.
Websites can look attractive and well designed but sometimes this can be a trap as (Furman, 2008) notes that we make preconscious judgements because we are distracted by the design visuals before any real cognitive processing can take place. However, if a website has elements like familiar logos, contact information etc then its credibility is often reliable. What you are doing on the internet can often be affected by credibility. If your researching for a project, credibility is important for reliability.
Reliability of information is another issue. The information that is gathered can often be false or incomplete. If someone does not cite the text then it could fiction or someone’s biased opinion. An example of this would be Wikipedia where it is freely open for editing, meaning that anyone can easily change the information displayed on the website. This is something to be careful of when researching for projects etc.
Reference List
Doncor. (2011) Website credibility. Retrieved from http://www.doncor.com/site/design
Furman, S. (2008). Credibility. Retrieved from http://www.usability.gov/articles/102009news.html
durhamblog 