Artefact Description
The second artefact was a mini website which aimed to discover whether consumers are more willing to click on links to news articles with videos.
Artefact Analysis and Evaluation
The results of this experiment were recorded using ClickHeat, an open source heatmap that allowed me to see how many times each link was clicked. This proved very useful as I could see visually, which links were getting the most clicks throughout the experiment rather than only at the end. A disadvantage of using this method was the accuracy of the results, as I had to manually count the number of clicks on each link, which could have led to marginal inaccuracies in the numbers recorded.
The eight article links were laid out side by side in three rows. I feel that it is possible the placement of the links may have affected the results; for example, the first article link (which didn’t include a video) on the page received the most amount of clicks by a clear distance with 37 clicks. This particular result appeared to be an anomaly, as it was not in keeping with the general trend produced by the other results.
The other results consistently displayed a slightly greater number of clicks for the article links containing videos. Although the video links generally seemed to record better numbers, this conclusion is questioned by the one non-video link that recorded the most clicks of all. As previously stated, this may be because it was the first link on the page. Alternatively, it may have been the subject matter of this particular news story that attracted clicks, regardless of whether or not it had a video. This points out a possible flaw in my research methodology, as the reliability of the results must be questioned due to the fact that the subject matter of the articles may be the sole reason that people clicked on them, not necessarily due to it containing a video.
I feel that this artefact shows, if only slightly, that news articles with videos attract more clicks, suggesting that ‘infotainment’ is one of the pressures that is reshaping the news media industry. However, this artefact is far from proof and I would like to explore this area further.
