CIS Working Paper Series

EARLY TRANSFORMATIONS OF COMMERCIAL WEB SITES: EVIDENCE FROM PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

Many organizations are constantly redesigning their web presence. Despite the frequency of these transformations, there appears to be little evidence to explain why organizations undertake such initiatives and what kinds of changes are incorporated into each updated version of a web presence. To understand why commercial organizations transform their web presence, we conduct a content analysis and a cluster analysis of press releases describing redesign initiatives in the late 1990s. Findings suggest that the majority of companies redesigned their web presence to expand information and change navigation protocols. Surprisingly, the addition of interactive features such as online ordering and community communication channels is present in only 20% of the redesign cases studied. According to the groups provided by the cluster analysis, most of the changes reported in these press releases are centered on improving the usability of the web presence. Based on this evidence we conclude that initial transformations to commercial web sites were more driven by the need to effectively communicate new information than by the addition of e-commerce features.

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