Penn State announces the Striptease Effect of Slow Loading Pictures

"The Tease Effect of Slow Downloading: Arousal and Excitation Transfer in Online Communication" presents evidence that slow loading images - and potentially, therefore, pages - work to engage visitors. The study suggests that there may be a benefit to producers to having images appear slowly, and challenges the dominant view that a basic tenet of Web design is that download speeds should be fast. As such it provides more ammunition in the battle for priority between experience and performance that is occasionally fought out by user research staff (see UN story How to Exploit Branding to ensure Usable Products).

Student Researcher Carson B. Wagner and supervisor Shyam Sundar Sethuraman of Penn State University produced the study. 'When a website image takes a long time to load onto our computer screens, the wait may be frustrating . But it can also be physiologically arousing. That is, the effect of a slowly-downloading image can be likened to the tantalizing effects of strategic concealment found in striptease.'

They argue that:
* A slow-loading website will be more arousing than a fast-loading website.

* Participants exposed to a website subsequent to a slow-loading website will show greater arousal than will participants exposed to the site subsequent to a fast-loading website.

* Participants exposed to the Web subsequent to a slow-loading website will show greater browsing activity than will participants exposed to the Web subsequent to a fast-loading website.

They conclude that although we all complain about slow downloading speeds, once we endure it, we seem to have more invested in the website than if we were brought into the same website with an instantaneously loading image.

What they haven't investigated alongside this is the number of visitors who leave the site before much downloading - and, thus, any engagement - can take place.

Associated Link: The Tease Effect of Slow Loading

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