The Impact of Gender and Visual Presentation of Advertising on User Experience in Mobile Shopping Apps

The visual presentation of mobile shopping ads as a visual presentation provides a good user experience for the user when performing online shopping operations. The usability of the shopping app user interface is a significant design issue in the user experience. This study aimed to explore the usability of gender and mobile shopping ad visuals in a shopping website's operation and to suggest future design improvements. A 2 x 2 between-subjects experiment (Between-subjects design) was planned to help explore whether gender (i.e., male and female) and different visual presentation types of mobile shopping ads (i.e., static and dynamic ads) affect users' task performance and their subjective evaluations. This experiment used a purposive sampling method, and a total of 32 participants were recruited to participate in the experiment. Data collection for the experiment included participants' task performance and subjective ratings on a 7-point Likert scale and semi-structured interviews. The generated results revealed that: (1) Asignificant interaction between gender and ad presentationwas found in operational performance, with males significantly faster between task operational performance during static ads than between task operational performance during dynamic ads. However, the opposite was true for females at operation time; (2) Gender influenced users' preference and trustworthiness level in shopping apps, and females generally rated higher in preference and trustworthiness level than males; (3) In the subjective measure of reasonable, the reasonable level of static ads was generally higher than that of dynamic ads; (4) There was a significant interaction between gender and ad presentation in the subjective measure of satisfaction. Males rated significantly higher in static ads than in dynamic ads. (5) There was a significant interaction between gender and ad presentation in the subjective measure of satisfaction, with males significantly more satisfied with static ads than dynamic ads. However, the opposite result is obtained for females. The findings generated from the research can improve the understanding of gender differences in ad usability in shopping application interfaces and provide a reference for the visual design of ads in future shopping APPs, especially for gender-specific shopping APPs.