Face it - photos don't make a web site trustworthy

Use of staff photographs is frequently advocated as a means of increasing customer confidence in an e-shop. However, these claims are not conceptually or empirically grounded. In this paper we describe a qualitative study, which elicited customer reactions towards an e-commerce site that displayed staff photographs and links to richer media. The results suggest that employing social and affective cues, particularly in the form of photos, can be a risky strategy. To be effective they should be combined with functionality and targeted specifically at the user types we identified.