Small Initiatives comment on some recent research which shows that Design plays a huge role in the credibility of web sites, particularly e-commerce and e-business. Web credibility is an interesting area of concern for the web, particularly as the Semantic Web idea takes shape.
The article makes references to the Consumer Web Watch article which focuses on this topic and comments also on the Stanford University Credibility initiative.
The interesting and important aspect of this, is that it puts quite a bit of power in the hands of visual creatives.
Web Credibility refers to what leads people and/or users into believing or not believing what they find online.