PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

The aim of the present research was to motivate website-users and evoke a positive user experience in line with users' goals. Several variants of achievement eliciting pop-ups were designed and tested on a real business-website. A pre-test examined the effectiveness of 24 combinations of pictures and words in eliciting achievement motivation. The strongest effects on user experience were found for pop-ups containing a congruent achievement-related picture and word. The three pop-up variants with the most positive ratings were employed in a subsequent experiment. The main experiment tested the effects of a sequence of three pop-ups that were presented on a website. We had three conditions with different display times of the sequence of pop-ups. They were presented to website-users for either 1, 2 or 3 seconds and compared to a control group on subsequent motivation-related ratings. The results demonstrated that the website was stronger associated with achievement motivation if pop-ups were presented for only 1 or 2 seconds, compared with 3 seconds or the control group. This indicates that short presentations of pop-ups lead to a positive user experience on learning and business websites, and that it is crucial to avoid the disturbing interruption of longer presentation times. It could be an important design guideline to flash shorter pop-ups that make online environments more appealing to users, and activate motivational contents that are in line with the users' goals.