A Staged Approach to Identifying Web Site Features for Small Businesses

摘要

An increasing number of small businesses are experimenting with setting up web sites, most of than with little thought as to how they will go about it. This paper proposes a method that may be used by small businesses to assist in determining the actual web site features that they should implement on their web sites in a staged approach. It is based upon the premise that: 1. Small businesses will generally develop their web sites in stages (refer previous section) 2. There will be a number of different costs associated with the setup and ongoing maintenance of the web site. 3. A small business manager is going to have to need to have some idea of the level of these costs, but is likely to be confused by all of the options available and will find it difficult to identify all of the associated costs. The proposed method simplifies the decisions that need to be made by-small business managers down to two major questions - What is the business value of a feature? How often does it need to be updated? Combined with predetermined values for the setup cost and maintenance cost of each feature, the method provides a recommendation as to when a feature should be implemented, based upon the perceived value of the feature to the business, the setup cost and the cost of ongoing maintenance. Recommendations made by the method tend to follow the traditional methods of web site development for small businesses, from the simple web site to the more complex over time.