We all know that a slow website, full of links, colors and ads, is not at all functional and pleasing to the eye, both from an aesthetic point of view and in terms of navigation. For example, one of the fundamental things that Google suggests is to reduce the graphic weight of sites and blogs to facilitate the loading of the same, since it is considered that the speed with which a website is loaded is essential to guarantee a positive browsing experience for the visitor.
However, until now, this information was only a matter for computer scientists; now some neuroscientists are alerting us to the importance of creating Web pages easy to use, intuitive and quick to load. A study sponsored by Computer Associates and conducted by Foviance claims that websites and blogs that require enormous concentration on the part of end users would help to increase the level of stress in the latter. The study in question showed substantial differences in the movements of the facial muscles and eyes as well as in the behavior of people when they were in front of a poorly designed web page. In this way it was possible to observe that when a website or a blog does not have an adequate design, people have to concentrate twice as much to be able to navigate within it, and this increases their level of stress and excitement. This experiment used a combination of EEG and eye-tracking, and other biometric measurements to assess how people reacted to web pages. It was thus possible to observe how sites that loaded slowly and that had very poor or unintuitive functions, with a heavy and ugly graphic design, caused very high feelings of frustration in users. In most sites, the search for information and fluency in navigation are essential characteristics, for this reason it is important that the web pages are designed in an adequate and functional way, allowing us to find the products or information we want quickly, suggesting at the same time other products or information that may be of interest to us. When browsing and searching websites becomes particularly complex, people experience growing frustration that results in a high level of stress. The researchers conclude that if businesses want to attract customers, they need to reduce the stress caused by certain websites, thus maximizing the chance that they will return to the page again. However, it should be emphasized that the sample examined was very limited, only 13 subjects aged between 22 and 42 years.
