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"For example, nearly half of all consumers (or 46.1%) in the study assessed the credibility of sites based in part on the appeal of the overall visual design of a site, including layout, typography, font size and color schemes."
[consumerwebwatch.org...]
As the authors of the study themselves admitted, they may have introduced a flaw into the study by making the "Design" category too broad. For instance, factors which really are more related to Usability (font size, e.g.) all ended up counting as Design.
My direct experience with a bunch of sites over the years has not lined up with this study at all. People are simply NOT conscious of much of their real motivations.
The old maxim is that "actions speak louder than words". To succeed on the web we've got to measure behavior/action -- and value that more than opinion. This study only measures opinions and comments. That's probably why it looks so skewed.
I absoultely agree with Tedster. Opinions are only a very poor predictor of actual behaviour. A lot of error gets in the way in inferring behaviour from opinions. The best way is to give a sample a task, and observe their actual behaviour, (without giving away that you are actually observing!) Logs are a gold mine. They measure behaviour though there are big problems itself in the raw data. But we have set up experiemnts using various url's as a way of measuring actual behaviour for a long time, as well as observing browsing behaviour directly. With enough time and patience, and following a few obvious principles on observational research anyone can do it for their own niche and target market.
