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Representing small business web presence content: the web presence pyramid model

  • Empirical Research
  • Published:
European Journal of Information Systems

Abstract

This article investigates ‘stage’ models that have been developed for researchers, practitioners and policymakers to explain how small businesses move from a basic to a sophisticated online presence and/or provide advice as to how they could do this. The main problem of these models is that small businesses do not necessarily develop their online presence in this manner. In addition, they do not consider that the online presence of most small businesses extends beyond their own website to the use of third party web portals, business directories and more recently social media websites. A new model, the web presence pyramid model, is thus proposed. The model represents the adoption levels of different categories of website features and does this in a non-linear manner, overcoming a limitation of stage models. A further contribution of the article is the classification of the web presence of small business industry sectors into new categories: Basic Web Presence; Added Value Websites; Online Database Websites and Payment Web Presence. A survey approach was used to conduct an online content analysis of the web presence of Australian small businesses, with the different types of web presences across industry sectors presented using the web presence pyramid model.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Information Systems, College of Business, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia

    Stephen Burgess

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  1. Stephen Burgess
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Correspondence to Stephen Burgess.

Appendices

Appendix A

Identification of web presence features

This Appendix outlines the identification of specific website features for the model. The list of potential business and third party website features that could fill these spaces is long. Table A1 provides a list of business website and third party website features that were identified from other website content studies, such as Alonso Mendo & Fitzgerald (2005); Burgess (2011) and Burgess et al (2007) (refer the third and fourth Columns of Table A1 for the comprehensive list). These features have been classified into Angehrn’s (1997) spaces (Column 1). To avoid the complexity associated with the large number of features identified, another classification category was added by reducing some of the specific website features that into more common categories within the ICDT model (refer Column 2). This approach was also used by Lee (2012), although that study was limited to examining a smaller number of website features.

Table A1 Website categories used in this study
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Rows with shading represent where the author identified that different versions of similar features occur for features on business websites as opposed to third party websites.

The reason for doing this was to be able to concentrate upon the purpose of having a feature as part of the web presence and for each category to represent a specific advancement in website development – from more common features to less common features. For instance, it is reasonable to suggest from previous studies (such as the Telstra Corporation (2012) study) that the following generally apply for a business’ own website:

  • In the information space, most small businesses have contact details and business information on their websites, but some will also have other ‘added value’ information as described in Table A1.

  • In the communications space, many small businesses will provide communications facilities for customers to contact the business (such as provision of e-mail addresses and/or e-mail forms). However, fewer businesses will have advanced social networking capabilities (such as a discussion board). A simpler form of ‘social networking’, where customers are able to post reviews of businesses themselves, is also included in this space.

  • In the transactions space, businesses can provide real-time catalogues and online ordering, as well as allowing real-time, online payments.

  • In the distribution space, some small businesses make provision for the simple download of their goods from their websites, rather than providing complete ‘e-services’. For a discussion of e-services and how they can be distinguished from traditional services, see Hofacker et al (2007).

This approach does not classify businesses according to a particular ‘stage’ in a model. Rather, businesses are classified into website categories and virtual spaces by the particular website features adopted. In addition, a snapshot of the website profile of particular industry sectors can be determined by analysing multiple businesses in a sector.

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Appendix B

Internet space website feature adoption by industry sector

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Table B1 Small business website and third party website information space features by industry sector
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Table B2 Small business website and third party website communications space features by industry sector
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Table B3 Small business website and third party website transactions space features by industry sector
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Table B4 Small business website and third party website distribution space features by industry sector
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Burgess, S. Representing small business web presence content: the web presence pyramid model. Eur J Inf Syst 25, 110–130 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/ejis.2015.4

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