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

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.

Proximity Trade and Urban Sustainability: Small Retailers’ Expectations Towards Local Online Marketplaces

“…Regarding their presence on the Internet, new Burgess Classification [79] was used, where the presence of a business on the Internet is classified in a pyramid depending on its web model. To this categorization was added the percentage of the volume of online sales over the total sales.…”

Mapping the online presence of small local sporting clubs

“…The study adopted a survey approach to analyze the web presence of local sporting clubs, similar to that adopted by Burgess (2016).…”

“…More recently, Lopes and Melão (2016) study of Portuguese SME websites found mostly simple websites, with only 16% accepting online orders or reservations and 6% facilitating online payments. Additionally, Burgess (2016) noted that stage models mostly concentrated only upon small business websites, not including other aspects of the small business web presence. Burgess (2016) developed the web presence pyramid model (refer Figure 1) to represent Australian small business' broader web presence.…”

“…Additionally, Burgess (2016) noted that stage models mostly concentrated only upon small business websites, not including other aspects of the small business web presence. Burgess (2016) developed the web presence pyramid model (refer Figure 1) to represent Australian small business' broader web presence. The model was based upon Angehrn's (1997) four "virtual spaces":…”

“…Note also that a midpoint value, in this case 0.5 (50% adoption-gray shading) was also used. Each bar has three levels (basic, intermediate, and advanced activity in the space) which indicates the extent to which each online platform has been implemented within the clubs, moving from basic features in the center of the model to advanced features on the outside (as used by Burgess (2016). The level of use of each of these features is represented by shading.…”