Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the importance of websites and social media platforms to find out how they contribute to the improvement of business performance. A new automated data collection method is developed to determine the technology maturity level of websites. These website quality indicators are linked to and compared against small and medium enterprise (SME) competitiveness data set to find competency pillars having significant impacts on the online presence, and to identify most important factors for online digital transformation. In this way, periodic analysis of websites can signal early warnings if competitiveness data of an SME is worth to refresh. Continuous maturity monitoring of competitors’ websites provides useful benchmark information for an enterprise as well.

Design/methodology/approach

A conceptual model was developed for the examination of the online presence and its effect on the competitiveness of small- and medium-sized businesses. An innovative, automatically generated WebIX indicator was developed through technical and content analysis of websites of 958 SMEs’ included in the Global Competitiveness Project (GCP) network data set. A series of ANOVA analysis was used for both data sources to determine the relationships between Web quality and competitiveness levels to define the online presence maturity categories.

Findings

Both the existence and the quality of the websites proved to have positive impact on the SME’s competitiveness. Different online presence maturity categories contribute to different competitiveness pillars; therefore, key factors of online digital transformation were identified. According to the findings, company websites are more related to marketing functions than information technology from the point of competitiveness.

Originality/value

Competency relationships were identified between online activity and competitiveness. The foundations of automated competitiveness measures were developed. The traditional survey based subjective data collection was combined with objective data collection methodology in a reproducible way.

中文翻译：

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在线活动对中小企业竞争力的影响

目的

本文的目的是研究网站和社交媒体平台的重要性，以了解它们如何促进业务绩效的提高。开发了一种新的自动数据收集方法来确定网站的技术成熟度水平。这些网站质量指标与中小企业（SME）竞争力数据集相关联并与之进行比较，以找到对在线存在有重大影响的能力支柱，并确定影响在线数字化转型的最重要因素。这样，如果中小企业的竞争力数据值得刷新，对网站的定期分析可以发出预警。对竞争对手网站的持续成熟度监视也为企业提供了有用的基准信息。

设计/方法/方法

开发了一个概念模型来检查在线状态及其对中小型企业竞争力的影响。通过对全球竞争力项目（GCP）网络数据集中包含的958家中小型企业网站的技术和内容分析，开发了一种创新的，自动生成的WebIX指标。对这两个数据源都使用了一系列的ANOVA分析，以确定Web质量和竞争力水平之间的关系，从而定义了在线状态的成熟度类别。

发现

网站的存在和质量都被证明对中小企业的竞争力有积极的影响。不同的在线状态成熟度类别构成了不同的竞争力支柱；因此，确定了在线数字化转型的关键因素。根据调查结果，从竞争力的角度来看，公司网站与营销功能的关系比信息技术的关系更大。

创意/价值

确定在线活动与竞争力之间的能力关系。开发了自动竞争措施的基础。传统的基于调查的主观数据收集与客观数据收集方法以可重复的方式结合在一起。