The effects of home page design on consumer responses: Moderating role of centrality of visual product aesthetics

•Studied a home page design as an advertising medium.•Explored the concept of CVPA as an individual difference.•Extended the HOE model and impression formation theory into online retailing.•Image-oriented home page is visually fluent.•Visually fluency influences preference and behavioral intentions.

This study examined the effect of home page design on consumer responses based on the Hierarchy of Effects model and impression formation theory. The design of the study was a one factor (home page design: image- vs. text-oriented) between-subjects design with two moderators, brand familiarity and the centrality of visual product aesthetics (CVPA). College women (N = 658) participated in this online experiment. The findings revealed that: (1) an image-oriented design is more effective in enhancing a home page’s visual fluency, and (2) people in both high and low CVPA groups preferred an image-oriented home page to a text-oriented home page.