Designing electronic shops, persuading consumers to buy

The purpose of this article is to show how to design persuasive and successful Web shops. An approach to commercial site design that draws on theories of visual persuasion is proposed. We focus on the role of emotion. Images in an ad are typically meant to create some emotional disposition toward the product, or social cause.

The importance of emotions in the on-line shopping context is highlighted. Mechanisms found in visual persuasion showing ways of capturing the audience's attention and emotions are discussed. To illustrate these mechanisms, examples drawn from electronic shopping are considered. To strengthen the discussion, an evaluation of shop home pages, situated within the perspective of visual persuasion is presented.

This study has given some indications that viewers form distinctive emotional impressions from shop designs. Thus, by building on visual persuasion theories, we can learn how to design seductive Web shops.