Website aesthetics: Does it matter? A study on effects of perception of website aesthetics, usability and content quality on online purchase intention

Abstract

Aesthetics is advocated as one of the key factors influencing consumer judgment and preference in several areas of academia ranging from marketing, consumer research to architectural design. However, research in IS and HCI has paid little attention to topics concerning aesthetics until recently. The current study investigated the influences of website aesthetics together with usability and content quality on usera??s online purchase intention mediated by hedonic and utilitarian shopping value. It highlighted the importance of both utilitarian and hedonic shopping value to establish a complete shopping experience online. Additionally, task involvement was for the first time introduced to investigate its moderating effect on how aesthetics influences usability, content quality through the halo-effect as well as how aesthetics influences utilitarian shopping value. An experimental survey was conducted to collect responses from 165 undergraduate students. Although aesthetics is found to be a significant factor to both hedonic and utilitarian shopping value, the relationship between aesthetics and utilitarian shopping value weakens as user task involvement increases. Content quality and usability are found to be constantly significant factors of both shopping values. Results also showed that influence of aesthetics to usability and content quality is always significant and this extends the clause a??what is beautiful is usablea??. The results suggest useful implications for practices and also offer numerous opportunities for future research.