Website Quality and Performance Indicators Including Ratio Numbers – A Study of German and Danish SME Companies

Authors

  • Heiko Henning Thimm Pforzheim University GERMANY (AACSB accredited)
  • Karsten Boye Rasmussen Univesity of Southern Denmark Department of Marketing & Management
  • Wolfgang Gohout Pforzheim University GERMANY (AACSB accredited)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18533/job.v1i6.39

Keywords:

website quality, company performance indicators, small and medium enterprises, correlation analysis

Abstract

From an investment into a good company website usually economic advantages are expected. However, there only exist a few studies about the correlations between economic indicators and the quality of company websites. To investigate these correlations is one of the objectives of an international long-term study of 1,000 small and medium-sized European production companies in Germany and Denmark.

This article gives an overview of the research project with an emphasis on the statistical investigations, the obtained results, and possible interpretations. It is demonstrated how in correlation analyses one can obtain insights also from ratio numbers such as the financial gearing.    

Author Biography

  • Heiko Henning Thimm, Pforzheim University GERMANY (AACSB accredited)

    Heiko Thimm is a full professor for quantitative methods and information technology at the AACSB accredited Pforzheim University, Germany.

    He holds a Master Degree from the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, NJ and a PhD Degree from the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany both in Computer Science. From 1992-1998 he carried out his PhD research at the German National Research Center for Computer Science (GMD-IPSI) where he was involved in several pioneering Internet research projects. Before his return to academia in 2004 he worked 7 years at SAP AG and Sun Microsystems among others he gained valuable practical experience in information systems engineering and management. He published over 50 articles in international conference proceedings and scientific journals such as ACM CSCW, IEEE Data Engineering, IEEE Multimedia Computing and Systems, ECIS, IEEE HICSS, Int. Journal on Computer Applications in Technology, Int. Journal of Distributed Systems and Technology, and SAGE Bulletin of Sociological Methodology.

     His current research interests include: website research, business applications in SMEs, information systems for sustainability management, collaboration support technology and decision support systems, active and intelligent information systems.

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Published

2016-07-12

Issue

Vol. 1 No. 3 (2016): July

Section

Articles

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