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Online impulsive purchasing is growing exponentially, and website-related factors play a substantial role in this phenomenon. This study provides a comprehensive and integrative framework encompassing a variety of website-related factors influencing impulsive purchase behaviour.

The study is a systematic literature review, which includes literature search from two prominent databases. This article consolidates the results of 60 relevant research papers, and thematic analysis is performed on various website-related aspects classified into five research topics.

The different website qualities have been classified into broad themes and their role in online impulse buying has been explored. The antecedents, moderators, mediators, and outcomes are portrayed in an integrated research framework. Possible research gaps have been identified, and a future research agenda has been proposed, representing potential research areas.

As we have included only studies published in the English language, this review may be limited by language bias. Relevant research published in other languages might have been excluded.

This literature review may provide management insights to marketers and practitioners managing online retail websites. To sustain an online business in the long term, it is critical for online retailers to have a thorough understanding of all conceivable website stimuli and develop them in a way that compels consumers to make impulsive purchases.

This study represents an original contribution to the realm of systematic literature reviews. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first SLR that elaborately delineates the influence of website-related factors on online impulse buying behaviour.

This study aims to explore the link creating behaviour of European highly cited scientists based upon their online lists of publications and their institutional personal websites.

A total of 1,525 highly cited scientists working at European institutions were first identified. Outlinks from their online lists of publications and their personal websites pointing to a pre-defined collection of popular academic websites and file types were then gathered by a personal web crawler.

Perhaps surprisingly, a larger proportion of social scientists provided at least one outlink compared to the other disciplines investigated. By far the most linked-to file type was PDF and the most linked-to type of target website was scholarly databases, especially the Digital Object Identifier website. Health science and life science researchers mainly linked to scholarly databases, while scientists from engineering, hard sciences and social sciences linked to a wider range of target websites. Both book sites and social network sites were rarely linked to, especially the former. Hence, whilst successful researchers frequently use the Web to point to online copies of their articles, there are major disciplinary and other differences in how they do this.

This is the first study to analyse the outlinking patterns of highly cited researchers' institutional web presences in order to identify which web resources they use to provide access to their publications.

This study aims to examine the performance of Indian research Institutions’ websites using webometrics by investigating their visibility, traffic ranks, number of links, time on site, Indian/Foreign users and page ranks besides focusing on the two designed hypotheses.

The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) directory (www.csir.res.in/external/heads/aboutcsir/lab_directory.htm) is used to identify the research institutions in India. The directory lists 40 research institutions across India. However, Alexa did not offer required information for some of the websites due to very high traffic ranks, and accordingly the list is reduced to 21 research institutions. The data collected were analysed and tabulated to reveal findings in accordance with the desired objectives.

The results reveal that global traffic ranks, number of page views, number of links and time on site of Indian research institutions are low. However, the page ranks are to some extent satisfactory. The traffic ranks of Indian research institutions differ significantly, whereas no major difference in the page ranks is found. Further, the results show that Indian research institutions’ websites have not been able to attract foreign visitors given the calibre and reputation of these institutions.

The results of this study will be useful for website administrators of research institutions in India and across the globe.

This paper aims to engage with the growing debate on the factors that affect e‐government adoption in the developing country of Jordan. The change from traditional interactions between government and citizens in Jordan to interaction via the web needs further exploration in order to understand the factors that might affect e‐government adoption by citizens. This paper therefore aims to report on a study to identify the main factors that influence citizens' intention to adopt e‐government websites in Jordan, using a theoretical framework consisting of diffusion of innovation theory (DOI) and the technology acceptance model (TAM).

A survey study of 400 Jordanian citizens who were internet users investigated the influence of the aforementioned factors on the adoption and use of e‐government websites. Multiple regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses.

Contrary to previous research, trust in the internet, relative advantage, compatibility and perceived ease of use were not found to be significant predictors of intention to use e‐government websites. Trust in government, website design, beliefs, complexity and perceived usefulness were significant factors in Jordanian citizens' intention to use e‐government websites.

This study is one of the few to examine what influences adoption and use of e‐government websites by citizens in the Middle East. The study clearly identifies the relationship between the constructs of “beliefs” (religious views) and website design and e‐government adoption, and explores the influence of attitudes towards e‐government adoption in Jordan. Although previous studies show similarities between the constructs related to DOI (relative advantage and complexity) and those related to TAM (perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEoU)), this research shows the importance of including these constructs when considering the topic of e‐government adoption in a Middle Eastern country.

The purpose of this paper is to examine and verify the competitive intelligence tools Alexa and SimilarWeb, which are broadly used for website traffic data estimation. Tested tools belong to the state of the art in this area.

The authors use quantitative approach. Research was conducted on a sample of Czech websites for which there are accurate traffic data values, against which the other data sets (less accurate) provided by Alexa and SimilarWeb will be compared.

The results show that neither tool can accurately determine the ranking of websites on the internet. However, it is possible to approximately determine the significance of a particular website. These results are useful for another research studies which use data from Alexa or SimilarWeb. Moreover, the results show that it is still not possible to accurately estimate website traffic of any website in the world.

The limitation of the research lies in the fact that it was conducted solely in the Czech market.

Significant amount of research studies use data sets provided by Alexa and SimilarWeb. However, none of these research studies focus on the quality of the website traffic data acquired by Alexa or SimilarWeb, nor do any of them refer to other studies that would deal with this issue. Furthermore, authors describe approaches to measuring website traffic and based on the analysis, the possible usability of these methods is discussed.

This paper aims to focus on customer engagement (CE) in the underexplored context of transactional retailing websites, providing insight into the drivers, manifestations and dimensionality of the construct. The website is viewed as a collection of environmental stimuli, and focus is placed on identifying the website environmental cues that promote CE.

This focussed study follows an exploratory research design. A total of 22 semi-structured interviews were conducted with one segment group: over-55-year-old female online shoppers in the most commonly purchased product category online, clothing. The stimulus–organism–response model forms the theoretical framework.

The unique findings identify that product-related environmental cues drive CE on a website, suggesting that CE occurs at the level of the product, as opposed to the website.

CE with websites exists beyond the customer–brand dyad, with the website forming the third node in a triadic relationship between customer, brand (at level of the product) and website (at level of the product-related cues).

This study reveals the relationship between website environmental cues and the manifestation of CE, providing managers with insight on how best to drive CE. Confirmation is provided that the website represents a vital touchpoint in the engagement journey of a retail customer.

Websites as a focal object for CE are markedly under-researched. This study empirically supports the relevance of considering CE in this context and reveals the influence online environments have on CE.

The success of e-commerce websites depends on their effective communication and influence on their users. At first glance, the users are impressed by the website design and, if inspired, they would continue their operations on the website. This paper aims to evaluate the effects of visual aesthetic of the Web pages on users’ behavior in online shopping environment. In particular, the paper aims to evaluate the elements of visual aesthetic on the organism variables (i.e. “satisfaction,” “arousal,” “perceived on-line service quality” and “trust”) and measure them on the users’ response (i.e. purchase, comparison and re-visit).

Using the stimulus–organism–response (S-O-R) framework, the authors first assessed direct and indirect effects of visual aesthetics of e-commerce websites on customer responses. Then, the Visual Aesthetics of Websites Inventory (VisAWI) method was used to examine the effects of four dimensions (i.e. craftsmanship, simplicity, diversity and colorfulness) on users’ perceived website aesthetics. To do so, DigiKala.com, a famous Iranian e-commerce website was selected and the questionnaires were distributed among its users.

The study results revealed that the website aesthetics in the S-O-R evaluation had the greatest direct impact on “perceived quality of online services,” “trust,” “satisfaction” and “arousal,” respectively. These variables also indirectly affected “shopping,” “revisit” and “comparison to similar products on other websites.” Regarding the evaluations based on the VisAWI, the component “craftsmanship” played the most central role in expressing the website aesthetics, followed by the variables “simplicity,” “diversity” and “colorfulness,” respectively.

Although the considerable effect of Web aesthetics on customers’ purchase behavior has been identified in previous research, it has not been accurately measured. Furthermore, studies on Web aesthetics are mostly limited to information systems’ users and do not concern consumers. Therefore, considering the increasing growth in online shopping and the significance of Web aesthetics to online consumers, investigating how consumers respond to Web aesthetics is of vital importance.

This paper aims to examine the underlying motivations, attitudes and behaviors of exaggerated review posters and readers by examining the effect of review valence, emotional expression and language complexity on perceived poster, website and firm trustworthiness and subsequent behavioral intentions.

This research uses a mixed-method approach using the qualitative critical incident technique (CIT) and quantitative experimental design. Study 1 uses CIT to examine exaggerated online reviews from the poster perspective where Study 2 uses CIT to examine readers’ perceptions of exaggerated reviews. Study 3 conducts a between-subjects experimental design examining the impact of valence (positive vs negative) × emotion (low vs high) × language (vague vs detailed) on trustworthiness and behavior intention.

Results of the two qualitative studies (Study 1 and 2) find posters and readers use language complexity and emotions in exaggerated reviews. The results from the quantitative experimental design study (Study 3) find that language style and emotions influence customer perceptions of poster, website and firm trustworthiness, which also mediates the relationship between the qualitative aspects of review text on behavioral intentions.

The findings provide multiple practical implications on the prevalence of exaggerated online reviews and the importance of language and emotion in determining customer perceptions and behavioral intentions.

By focusing on both readers and posters in exaggerated eWOM, specific motivations, emotions and language, this research contributes to the literature of online reviews, customer misbehavior, trustworthiness, language use and value co-destruction in online environments.

The purpose of this paper is to determine which design and operational attributes of e-commerce websites consumers use to assess website quality. Cue utilization theory is used to examine the explanatory power, robustness and relevance of the WebQual model. Results indicate which WebQual dimensions are the most relevant and salient to website users. These dimensions are categorized by their perceived and confidence values. A second study is conducted about how website users evaluate and utilize the WebQual dimensions.

Survey methodology was utilized to provide insight into the nomological validity of the WebQual model by examining it through a cue utilization lens.

The first study categorizes the WebQual dimensions on their ability to provide a diagnostic measure of website quality, and consumer confidence in their ability to use these cues when judging the website's overall quality. The second study presents results of each dimension in relation to the quality evaluation of an actual e-commerce website. Additional analysis also revealed gender differences in cue utilization.

This study provided insight into WebQual-based research and identified original differences in cue utilization across genders. Results suggest that it may be beneficial for brand managers to focus on a subset of quality dimensions, rather than assume that consumers are comfortable using all website attributes to formulate quality judgments. These, results contribute to multiple literatures by providing a model that developers can utilize to focus on the deterministic characteristics of overall website quality. Further, the cue utilization perspective provides additional avenues for fruitful further research into consumer decision-making in the e-commerce context.

This study aims to evaluate the significance of the corporate website favorability notion and examines its factors in developing competitive advantage in the context of retail and service settings in the UK and Russia.

Based on the attribution, social identity and signaling theories, this study adopted the qualitative exploratory approach by conducting 14 interviews with retail experts and eight focus groups with retail users in the UK and Russia, combined with experts in website design, communication and marketing.

The study findings indicated that it is crucial to build and maintain a favorable corporate website that reveals the corporate identity as part of the overall company strategy. The study suggests that navigation, visual, information, usability, customization, security, availability, website credibility, customer service, perceived corporate social responsibility and perceived corporate culture are the factors of corporate website favorability that contribute to the company’s competitive advantage. The findings show that consumers from Russia as well as from the UK found the significance of a favorable corporate website (i.e. corporate website favorability), as well as the factors affecting corporate website favorability. However, consumers in the UK are more critical and demanding in the level of expectation of the website overall and put more weight than consumers from Russia on the perceived corporate social responsibility, perceived corporate culture, customer service and website credibility.

Corporate website favorability should be adopted by the companies, as part of the overall corporate identity management. Furthermore, it is advised to take into consideration the variations in the level of importance of the factors of corporate website favorability in different countries. The findings of this study suggest that this investigation will make a considerable managerial contribution to the understanding of a company’s decision-makers, communication professionals and website specialists about the building of a favorable corporate website in line with corporate identity strategy of the company.

There has been little systematic study of the effect of corporate websites on consumer evaluations of the websites; also, there is a lack of research with regard to the factors that contribute to the development of a favorable corporate website (i.e. corporate website favorability). This is the first study of its kind to find the effect of corporate website favorability in Russia, representing a non-western country, and the UK, representing a western country. Therefore, it contributes to the corporate visual identity literature by presenting the corporate website favorability construct and demonstrating the factors that influence corporate website favorability.