The Impact of Interactivity and Design Sophistication on the Performance of Commercial Websites for Small Businesses

Pat Auger

Journal of Small Business Management, 2005, vol. 43, issue 2, 119-137

Abstract: This study of small businesses involved in Internet‐based electronic commerce focuses on the relationship between the design of a website and its performance. Specifically, this study examines the relationships between two design constructs, the level of interactivity and design sophistication, and two performance measures, an overall measure of performance and the number of visitors to the site. Furthermore, the study explores the role of two contingency variables, market turbulence and the age of the website, on these relationships. The results indicate that the level of interactivity of a website is positively associated with overall performance, but not associated with the number of visitors. Furthermore, market turbulence moderates the relationship between interactivity and performance so that the two constructs are positively associated under high levels of market turbulence but not associated under low levels of market turbulence. Results also show that design sophistication is associated with a greater number of visitors but not with overall performance. These findings suggest that the performance of a website is affected differently by different design constructs and that multidimensional measures of performance are necessary to properly evaluate performance.

Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.1540-627x.2005.00129.x (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ujbmxx:v:43:y:2005:i:2:p:119-137

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ujbm20

DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-627x.2005.00129.x

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Small Business Management is currently edited by Eric Liguori

More articles in Journal of Small Business Management from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().