Auditing E-Commerce Interfaces With Browser-Based Field Experiments: A Method to Assess Effects of Visual Elements on Consumer Behavior
Abstract: Digital regulation is increasingly concerned with visual elements and their influence on consumer choices. However, regulators lack methods to independently, rigorously and realistically assess their effects. In this paper, we develop and apply a methodology to run browser-based experiments on a major online travel agency. Participants make consequential holiday accommodation choices from the lab, on a live version of the website. Using a browser extension, we manipulate the presence of marketing cues within-subject and the overall level of clutter between-subjects. We exert significant control over hotel choice sets and selecting which appear on screen. The results are causal, credible measures of mere visual effects and affordable to regulators with a careful experimental design. We also discuss the main implementation challenges of this method and release all our artifacts to facilitate future studies.