skip to main content
research-article

Website Visual Design Qualities: A Threefold Framework

Published: 10 April 2019 Publication History

Abstract

The present study aims to contribute to the information systems (IS) literature by developing a new theoretical perspective that integrates three dimensions of artifact visual design quality—namely aesthetic, functional, and symbolic dimensions—in the investigation of website visual design qualities that influence visitors’ attitudes and behaviors. Results suggest that website aesthetic, functional, and symbolic qualities positively influence intention to use the website and positive word of mouth and that website aesthetic quality positively influences website functional and symbolic qualities. Results also demonstrate that functional and symbolic qualities mediate the relationships between aesthetic quality and intention to use and positive word of mouth.

References

[1]
Ritu Agarwal and Henry C. Lucas. 2005. The information systems identity crisis: Focusing on high-visibility and high-impact research. Manage. Inf. Syst. Q. 29, 3 (2005), 381--398.
[2]
Adel M. Aladwani. 2006. An empirical test of the link between web site quality and forward enterprise integration with web consumers. Bus. Process Manage. J. 12, 2 (2006), 178--190.
[3]
Richard P. Bagozzi and Youjae Yi. 1988. On the evaluation of structural equation models. J. Acad. Market. Sci. 16, 1 (1988), 74--94.
[4]
John E. G. Bateson. 1995. Managing Services Marketing: Text and Readings (3rd ed.). Harcourt College Publishing, Fort Worth, TX.
[5]
Russell W. Belk. 1988. Possessions and the extended self. J. Cons. Res. 15, 2 (1988), 139--168.
[6]
Izak Benbasat and Robert Zmud. 2003. The identity crisis within the IS discipline: Defining and communicating the discipline's core properties. Manage. Inf. Syst. Q. 27, 2 (2003), 183--194.
[7]
Peter M. Bentler and Chih Ping Chou. 1987. Practical issues in structural modeling. Sociol. Methods Res. 16, 1 (1987), 78--117.
[8]
Peter H. Bloch. 1995. Seeking the ideal form: Product design and consumer response. J. Market. 59, 3 (1995), 16--29.
[9]
Anne Boomsma and Jeffrey J. Hoogland. 2001. The robustness of LISREL modeling revisited. Structural Equation Models: Present and Future, R. Cudeck, Stephen Du Toit, and Dag Sorbom (Eds.). Scientific Software International, 139--168.
[10]
Susan A. Brown, Viswanath Venkatesh, and Sandeep Goyal. 2014. Expectation confirmation in information systems research: A test of six competing models. Manage. Inf. Syst. Q. 38, 3 (2014), 729--756.
[11]
Barbara M. Byrne. 2009. Structural Equation Modeling With AMOS: Basic Concepts, Applications, and Programming (2nd ed.). Routledge, New York, NY.
[12]
Chingching Chang. 2012. Is that website for me? Int. J. Advert. 31, 4 (2012), 835--860.
[13]
Wen-Chih Chiou, Chin-Chao Lin, and Chyuan Perng. 2010. A strategic framework for website evaluation based on a review of the literature from 1995-2006. Inf. Manage. 47, 5-6 (2010), 282--290.
[14]
Ravindra Chitturi, Rajagopal Raghunathan, and Vijay Mahajan. 2007. Form versus function: How the intensities of specific emotions evoked in functional versus hedonic trade-offs mediate product preferences. J. Market. Res. 44, 4 (2007), 702--714.
[15]
Erin Cho and Youn-Kyung Kim. 2012. The effects of website designs, self-congruity, and flow on behavioral intention. Int. J. Des. 6, 2 (2012), 31--39.
[16]
Mariëlle E. H. Creusen and Jan Schoormans. 2005. The different roles of product appearance in consumer choice. J. Prod. Innov. Manage. 22, 1 (2005), 63--81.
[17]
Tim R. V. Davis. 1984. The influence of the physical environment in offices. Acad. Manage. Rev. 9, 2 (1984), 271--283.
[18]
Liqiong Deng and Marshall Scott Poole. 2010. Affect in web interfaces: A study of the impacts of web page visual complexity and order. Manage. Inf. Syst. Q. 34, 4 (2010), 711--730.
[19]
Astrid Dickinger and Brigitte Stangl. 2013. Website performance and behavioral consequences: A formative measurement approach. J. Bus. Res. 66, 6 (2013), 771--777.
[20]
Peter R. Dickson. 1996. Marketing Management (2nd ed.). South-Western College Publishing, Fort Worth, TX.
[21]
Sarah Diefenbach and Marc Hassenzahl. 2011. The dilemma of the hedonic—Appreciated, but hard to justify. Interact. Comput. 23, 5 (2011), 461--472.
[22]
Karen Dion, Ellen Berscheid, and Elaine Walster. 1972. What is beautiful is good. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 24, 3 (1972), 285--290.
[23]
Helga Dittmar. 1992. The Social Psychology of Material Possessions: To Have Is to Be. Prentice-Hall, New York, NY.
[24]
Maria Douneva, Rafael Jaron, and Meinald T. Thielsch. 2016. Effects of different website designs on first impressions, aesthetic judgements and memory performance after short presentation. Interact. Comput. 28, 4 (2016), 552--567.
[25]
Claes Fornell and David F. Larcker. 1981. Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. J. Market. Res. 18, 1 (1981), 39--50.
[26]
Pasquale Gagliardi. 1990. Symbols and Artifacts: Views of the Corporate Landscape. de Gruyter, Berlin.
[27]
Dennis A. Gioia and Kumar Chittipeddi. 1991. Sensemaking and sensegiving in strategic change initiation. Strateg. Manage. J. 12, 6 (1991), 433--448.
[28]
Dennis A. Gioia, James B. Thomas, Shawn M. Clark, and Kumar Chittipeddi. 1994. Symbolism and strategic change in academia: The dynamics of sensemaking and influence. Org. Sci. 5, 3 (1994), 363--383.
[29]
Edward L. Grubb and Harrison L. Grathwohl. 1967. Consumer self-concept, symbolism and market behavior: A theoretical approach. J. Market. 31, 4 (1967), 22--27.
[30]
Joseph F. Hair Jr., William C. Black, Barry J. Babin, and Rolph E. Anderson. 2009. Multivariate Data Analysis (7th ed.). Pearson, Upper Saddle River, NJ.
[31]
Daniel S. Hamermesh and Jeff E. Biddle. 1994. Beauty and the labor market. Am. Econ. Rev. 84, 5 (1994), 1174--1194.
[32]
JoAndrea Hoegg and Joseph W. Alba. 2011. Seeing Is believing (too much): The influence of product form on perceptions of functional performance. J. Prod. Innov. Manage. 28, 3 (2011), 346--359.
[33]
JoAndrea Hoegg, Joseph W. Alba, and Darren W. Dahl. 2010. The good, the bad, and the ugly: Influence of aesthetics on product feature judgments. J. Cons. Psychol. 20, 4 (2010), 419--430.
[34]
Christian Homburg, Martin Schwemmle, and Christina Kuehnl. 2015. New product design: Concept, measurement, and consequences. J. Market. 79, 3 (2015), 41--56.
[35]
Albert S. Hornby and Anthony P. Cowie. 1989. Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
[36]
Ming-Hui Huang. 2005. Web performance scale. Inf. Manage. 42, 6 (2005), 841--852.
[37]
Zhenhui Jiang, Weiquan Wang, Bernard C. Y. Tan, and Jie Yu. 2016. The determinants and impacts of aesthetics in users’ first interaction with websites. J. Manage. Inf. Syst. 33, 1 (2016), 229--259.
[38]
Michael O. Jones. 1996. Studying Organizational Symbolism: What, How, Why? Sage Publications, London.
[39]
Sung S. Kim and Jai-Yeol Son. 2009. Out of dedication or constraint? A dual model of post-adoption phenomena and its empirical test in the context of online services. Manage. Inf. Syst. Q. 33, 1 (2009), 49--70.
[40]
Klaus Krippendorff. 2006. The Semantic Turn: A New Foundation for Design. Taylor 8 Francis, London.
[41]
Minu Kumar and Nitika Garg. 2010. Aesthetic principles and cognitive emotion appraisals: How much of the beauty lies in the eye of the beholder? J. Cons. Psychol. 20, 4 (2010), 485--494.
[42]
Judith H. Langlois, Lisa E. Kalakanis, Adam J. Rubenstein, Andrea K. Larson, Monica Hallam, and Monica Smoot. 2000. Maxims or myths of beauty? A meta-analytic and theoretical review. Psychol. Bull. 126, 3 (2000), 390--423.
[43]
Younghwa Lee and Kenneth A. Kozar. 2012. Understanding of website usability: Specifying and measuring constructs and their relationships. Decis. Supp. Syst. 52, 2 (2012), 450--463.
[44]
Michael K. Lindell and David J. Whitney. 2001. Accounting for common method variance in crosssectional research designs. J. Appl. Psychol. 86, 1 (2001), 114--121.
[45]
Gitte Lindgaard, Gary Fernandes, Cathy Dudek, and Judith M. Brown. 2006. Attention web designers: You have 50 milliseconds to make a good first impression! Behav. Inf. Technol. 25, 2 (2006), 115--126.
[46]
Carlota Lorenzo-Romero, Efthymios Constantinides, and Maria-del-Carmen Alarcón-del-Amo. 2013. Web aesthetics effects on user decisions: Impact of exposure length on website quality perceptions and buying intentions. J. Internet Commerce 12, 1 (2013), 76--105.
[47]
Naresh K. Malhotra, Sung S. Kim, and Ashutosh Patil. 2006. Common method variance in IS research: A comparison of alternative approaches and a reanalysis of past research. Manage. Sci. 52, 12 (2006), 1865--1883.
[48]
Grant McCracken. 1986. Culture and consumption: A theoretical account of the structure and movement of the cultural meaning of consumer goods. J. Cons. Res. 13, 1 (1986), 71--84.
[49]
Morten Moshagen and Meinald Thielsch. 2013. A short version of the visual aesthetics of websites inventory. Behav. Inf. Technol. 32, 12 (2013), 1305--1311.
[50]
Charles H. Noble and Minu Kumar. 2010. Exploring the appeal of product design: A grounded, value-based model of key design elements and relationships. J. Prod. Innov. Manage. 27, 5 (2010), 640--657.
[51]
Don Norman. 2007. Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things. Basic Books, New York, NY.
[52]
Chorng-Shyong Ong, Shu-Chen Chang, and Shwn-Meei Lee. 2015. Development of webhapp: Factors in predicting user perceptions of website-related happiness. J. Bus. Res. 68, 3 (2015), 591--598.
[53]
Suzyn Ornstein. 1986. Organizational symbols: A study of their meanings and influences on perceived psychological climate. Org. Behav. Hum. Decis. Process. 38, 2 (1986), 207--229.
[54]
Jessie Pallud and Detmar W. Straub. 2014. Effective website design for experience-influenced environments: The case of high culture museums. Inf. Manage. 51, 3 (2014), 359--373.
[55]
Young Park and Ulrike Gretzel. 2007. Success factors for destination marketing web sites: A qualitative meta-analysis. J. Travel Res. 46, 1 (2007), 46--63.
[56]
Philip M. Podsakoff, Scott B. MacKenzie, Jeong-Yeon Lee, and Nathan P. Podsakoff. 2003. Common method biases in behavioral research: A critical review of the literature and recommended remedies. J. Appl. Psychol. 88, 5 (2003), 879--903.
[57]
Kristopher J. Preacher and Andrew F. Hayes. 2008. Contemporary approaches to assessing mediation in communication research. In The Sage Sourcebook of Advanced Data Analysis Methods for Communication Research, A. F. Hayes, M. D. Slater, and L. B. Snyder (Eds.). Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. 13--54.
[58]
Scott K. Radford and Peter H. Bloch. 2011. Linking innovation to design: Consumer responses to visual product newness. J. Prod. Innov. Manage. 28, 1 (2011), 208--220.
[59]
Anat Rafaeli and Iris Vilnai-Yavetz. 2004. Emotion as a connection of physical artifacts and organizations. Org. Sci. 15, 6 (2004), 671--686.
[60]
Rolf Reber, Norbert Schwarz, and Piotr Winkielman. 2004. Processing fluency and aesthetic pleasure: Is Beauty in the perceiver's processing experience? Pers. Soc. Psychol. Rev. 8, 4 (2004), 364--382.
[61]
Violina P. Rindova and Antoaneta P. Petkova. 2007. When is a new thing a good thing? technological change, product form design, and perceptions of value for product innovations. Org. Sci. 18, 2 (2007), 217--232.
[62]
M. Joseph Sirgy. 1982. Self-concept in consumer behavior: A critical review. J. Cons. Res. 9, 3 (1982), 287--300.
[63]
M. Joseph Sirgy and A. Coskun Samli. 1985. A path analytic model of store loyalty involving self-concept, store image, socioeconomic status, and geographic loyalty. J. Acad. Market. Sci. 13, 3 (1985), 265--291.
[64]
M. Joseph Sirgy, Dhruv Grewal, and Tamara Mangleburg. 2000. Retail environment, self-congruity, and retail patronage: An integrative model and a research agenda. J. Bus. Res. 49, 2 (2000), 127--138.
[65]
M. Joseph Sirgy, J. S. (Vic) Johar, A. Coskun Samli, and Claudius B. Claiborne. 1991. Self-congruity versus functional congruity: Predictors of consumer behavior. J. Acad. Market. Sci. 19, 4 (1991), 363--375.
[66]
Michael R. Solomon. 1983. The role of products as social stimuli: A symbolic interactionism perspective. J. Cons. Res. 10, 3 (1983), 319--329.
[67]
Rita Strebe. 2016. Aesthetics on the web: Effects on approach and avoidance behaviour. Behav. Inf. Technol. 35, 1 (2016), 4--20.
[68]
Kelly Tepper Tian, William O. Bearden, and Gary L. Hunter. 2001. Consumers’ need for uniqueness: Scale development and validation. J. Cons. Res. 28, 1 (2001), 50--66.
[69]
Claudia Townsend and Sanjay Sood. 2012. Self-affirmation through the choice of highly aesthetic products. J. Cons. Res. 39, 2 (2012), 415--428.
[70]
Noam Tractinsky. 1997. Aesthetics and apparent usability: Empirically assessing cultural and methodological issues. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY. 115--122.
[71]
Noam Tractinsky, Avivit Cokhavi, Moti Kirschenbaum, and Tal Sharfib. 2006. Evaluating the consistency of immediate aesthetic perceptions of web pages. Int. J. Hum.-Comput. Stud. 64, 11 (2006), 1071--1083.
[72]
Shu Pei Tsai. 2017. E-loyalty driven by website quality: The case of destination marketing organization websites. J. Org. Comput. Electr. Commerce 27, 3 (2017), 262--279.
[73]
Hans van der Heijden. 2003. Factors influencing the usage of websites: The case of a generic portal in the netherlands. Inf. Manage. 40, 6 (2003), 541--549.
[74]
Bert Vandecasteele and Maggie Geuens. 2010. Motivated consumer innovativeness: Concept, measurement, and validation. Int. J. Res. Market. 27, 4 (2010), 308--318.
[75]
Weiquan Wang and Izak Benbasat. 2016. Empirical assessment of alternative designs for enhancing different types of trusting beliefs in online recommendation agents. J. Manage. Inf. Syst. 33, 3 (2016), 744--775.
[76]
Karl E. Weick. 1995. Sensemaking in Organizations. Sage Publications, London.
[77]
Mel Yamamoto and David R. Lambert. 1994. The impact of product aesthetics on the evaluation of industrial products. J. Prod. Innov. Manage. 11, 4 (1994), 309--324.
[78]
Ping Zhang, Michael Scialdone, and Min-Chun Ku. 2011. IT artifacts and the state of IS research. In Proceedings of the 32nd International Conference on Information System 2011. Association for Information Systems, Shanghai.

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)Research on Innovative Practice and Theoretical Exploration of Visual Communication Design for Future MediaApplied Mathematics and Nonlinear Sciences10.2478/amns-2024-16699:1Online publication date: 5-Jul-2024
  • (2024)Factors Influencing User Intentions on Interactive Websites: Insights From the Technology Acceptance ModelIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2024.343741812(122735-122756)Online publication date: 2024
  • (2023)Empowering Digital Marketing with Interactive Virtual Reality (IVR) in Interior Design: Effects on Customer Satisfaction and Behaviour IntentionJournal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research10.3390/jtaer1802004618:2(889-907)Online publication date: 25-Apr-2023
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. Website Visual Design Qualities: A Threefold Framework

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems
    ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems  Volume 10, Issue 1
    March 2019
    65 pages
    ISSN:2158-656X
    EISSN:2158-6578
    DOI:10.1145/3325060
    Issue’s Table of Contents
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 10 April 2019
    Accepted: 01 December 2018
    Revised: 01 December 2018
    Received: 01 January 2018
    Published in TMIS Volume 10, Issue 1

    Permissions

    Request permissions for this article.

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. Website design
    2. aesthetic
    3. functional
    4. intention
    5. symbolic
    6. word of mouth

    Qualifiers

    • Research-article
    • Research
    • Refereed

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)321
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)33
    Reflects downloads up to 25 Jan 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)Research on Innovative Practice and Theoretical Exploration of Visual Communication Design for Future MediaApplied Mathematics and Nonlinear Sciences10.2478/amns-2024-16699:1Online publication date: 5-Jul-2024
    • (2024)Factors Influencing User Intentions on Interactive Websites: Insights From the Technology Acceptance ModelIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2024.343741812(122735-122756)Online publication date: 2024
    • (2023)Empowering Digital Marketing with Interactive Virtual Reality (IVR) in Interior Design: Effects on Customer Satisfaction and Behaviour IntentionJournal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research10.3390/jtaer1802004618:2(889-907)Online publication date: 25-Apr-2023
    • (2022)Online Store Aesthetics Impact Efficacy of Product Recommendations and HighlightingSensors10.3390/s2223918622:23(9186)Online publication date: 26-Nov-2022
    • (2022)An Empirical Study of Information Technology Capabilities to Enable Value Chain Activities and InterfacesInformation Systems Frontiers10.1007/s10796-022-10301-525:4(1533-1547)Online publication date: 21-Jun-2022
    • (2021)Influence of Site Personalization and First Impression on Young Consumers’ Loyalty to Tourism WebsitesSustainability10.3390/su1303142513:3(1425)Online publication date: 29-Jan-2021
    • (2021)UiLab, a Workbench for Conducting and Reproducing Experiments in GUI Visual DesignProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34571435:EICS(1-31)Online publication date: 29-May-2021
    • (2021)Interactive Film and Television Animation Special Effects Production Techniques in Visual DesignJournal of Physics: Conference Series10.1088/1742-6596/1881/2/0220201881:2(022020)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2021
    • (2021)It is worth a visit! Website quality and visitors’ intentions in the context of corporate museums: a multimethod approachCurrent Issues in Tourism10.1080/13683500.2021.197894725:18(3027-3041)Online publication date: 5-Oct-2021

    View Options

    Login options

    Full Access

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    HTML Format

    View this article in HTML Format.

    HTML Format

    Figures

    Tables

    Media

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media