Improving the Website Design Process for SMEs: A Design Science Perspective

The success of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in e-business is significantly affected by the quality of their websites. Currently, website designers focus mainly on improving the usability of websites. They pay less attention to the psychological, cognitive and other needs of the employees and customers who use these websites. The lack of attention to these needs leads to websites that are not well or appropriately utilised, negatively impacting the ebusiness ambitions of SMEs. This study adopts a design science approach (Hevner et al. 2004; March and Smith, 1995) to develop a new methodology for designing websites that takes these concerns into account. The new methodology is based on Brown’s principles (Brown, 1999), as they incorporate the various concerns of users. The new methodology was used to design a New Zealand SME's website and multiple methods were used to evaluate it. The data was complemented by the results of the requirements analysis exercise and the designer's wire frame models.