s. h. khodadad hoseini

The Internet helps consumers to adapt to the new methods of shopping. Well-designed product web pages and the effective use of verbal and visual characteristics create a favorable customer experience, which is critical to the success of online retailing, while these characteristics remain unclear. This research aims to investigate the verbal and visual characteristics that promote favorable online shopping experiences.

The methodology of this study is descriptive phenomenology. Evidences were collected from fifteen participants, by the aid of the semi-structured protocol using non-probable purposive sampling method. Colaizzi method was used to analyze the data by aid of "MAXQDA" software. The reliability of the coding is based on the level of agreement between two coders (kappa confidence) and the validity of the coding is confirmed by referring to the participant's feedback.

The findings contain three main themes and nine sub-themes. First, Shopping experience subdividing to product experience, privacy and security, return and exchange, delivery and user friendliness for the customer. Second, Product Verbal Characteristics themes subdividing to technical and printing information. Third, Product Visual Characteristics themes subdividing to graphical and structural elements.

Managers and online businesses can use the results of this research to improve their customer experiences and increase the effectiveness of product presenting by using verbal tools such as product technical and printing information, and visual tools such as graphical and structural elements.