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1. Introduction
The development of internet-based technologies has changed the customer shopping behaviors from traditional to modern forms with a completely different perspective, in which customers are no longer limited to time and distance (Ozuru and Akahome, 2016). Rudolph (2016) detected an incremental increase in the costs of electronic retail companies over recent years, which is expected to be continued over the coming years. He also noted that Web retail costs were estimated to be above 7.4% ($1.67tn) and would reach 8.8–12.4% by 2018–2019. However, the increasing competition in the e-commerce/retail industry has highlighted the significance of researching customer behavior for the aim of developing and maintaining them. In addition to branding and networking (investments on branding, networking and partnerships, and integration of online and offline channels), designing a website capable of attracting and retaining online customers is the most cost-effective method to strengthen the relationships with customers (Vargas, 2006). Stone et al. (2018) declared that with the rise of World Wide Web in 1990s, the website designers were dismissive about aesthetics and their ideas were mainly oriented toward text-based features. The importance of websites’ aesthetic has been escalated with the expansion of broadband by which organizations could have an opportunity to use design features such as images and videos for the purpose of improving their interaction with users. They also mentioned that website aesthetics has become more important in recent years with the prevalent use of internet. Previous studies have shown a shift of incentives in online shopping customers. The website shopping environment has increasingly become a place for fun and hedonic experiences. Rather than seeking for further economic benefits such as less expensive goods on the websites, the costumers look for a shopping environment where their hedonic needs are fulfilled and it is a fun and enjoyable space to stay (Childers et al., 2001; Fiore et al., 2005; Tsang and Tse, 2005). Hence, the website design aesthetics has become more important than ever in developing e-commerce websites so that an investigation of the website aesthetics contributes to an in-depth understanding of the online hedonic needs of customers (Wang et al., 2010). Ranganathan and Ganapathy (2002) and Yamamoto and Lambert (1994) acknowledged that visual aesthetics has played a decisive role in...