Thumbs down: bad emoji use costs online businesses

It should work, the whole point of these tiny pictures is catching the eye and adding a sprinkle of colour and fun to conversations.

Researchers from Monash Business School have found these little pictures may be hindering, not helping, online sales. Sad face.

Airbnb super-hosts using too many emoji, especially in place of a written word, risk looking unprofessional, lead researcher Dr Davide Orazi said.

"If you're a premium seller, you're expected to ooze competence," he said.

Using multiple emoji can make the seller come across as an amateur, Dr Orazi said.

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Emoji are small, cartoon images used to express an idea or emotion, becoming popular in the late 1990's to weave non-verbal cues into online conversation.

The library of emoji offered on smartphones and devices include cartoons of human expressions, animals, and objects ranging from saxophones to skateboards.

Researchers looked at the use of face and non-face emoji in more than 195,000 Airbnb short listing titles in the United States.

Dr Orazi said using some non-face emoji can help sell a listing.

But these images must be used sparingly, he said.

The study recommended using a maximum of one complementary non-face emoji - if any.

Emoji can be used in place of a word, "substitutive", or as a flourish to add colour to a sentence, "complementary".

Researchers said it's thumbs down for substitutive emoji. Sentences dotted with stand-in images are hard for the brain to process.

The study found using one complementary emoji can increase electronic word of mouth by about 26 per cent for regular Airbnb sellers.

Dr Orazi said the findings could be extrapolated to other digital platforms like eBay, Alibaba or Upwork.