Ever since the internet technology was developed in 90's, like radio, television andnews paper, it has become one of the most influencial medias. Comparing withtraditional media, internet performs significantly better on on-time information providing, communication, geography limitation and globalization. Not only the cost of seting it up is low, but also the speed of its information transmitting is fast. Therefore lots of firms set up their corporate websites and use its functionalaities to help their marketing and customer service. The most important factor that decides the quality of a corporate website is the website functionalities. The definition of "website functionalities" is wide. It contains many kinds of abilities that a website has. To help corporates/firms build corporate websites that can help their sales and services the best, this research intends to find out the relationship between companies' stock prices and their corporate website functionalities, and finally find out the website functionalities that can help firms' business performance and rank the website functionalities from the most important one to the least important one. This research takes stock information from the "Taiwan Stock Exchange Market Observation System" website. The information taken are the stock price, capital size and industry category. The size of the sample is 150 companies. This research developes a grading system that evaluates companies' performances on functionalities that were defined by Liu (1997)'s research on "Corporate Website Content" and Ghose& Dou(1998)'s research on "Corporate Website's Interactive Functionalities". This grading system gives a score to each of the 150 companies, and then analyzes the relationships between each company¡¦s score and its stock price/capital size/industry category. This research has a result showing that for the website functionalities that are related to a corporate's stock price, from the most significant related to least significant related can be ranked as "Customer Surpporting Functionality", "Website Information Functioanlity", "Advertising/Exhibiting/Broadcasting Functionality" and "Personalization Functionality". Considering industry category, companies in "Finance/Insurance" and "Transpotation industry" have highest scores on website functionalities. Companies in "high-tech industry" are the second. Companies in "conventional industries" score the lowest. Considering capital size, companies with capital size of "more than 5 billion NTD" have the highest score on website functionalities. Companies which have capital sizes of "2 ~ 5 billion" and "less than 2billion" have lower scores.

Research reports that the search for health information is the fourth most popular activity being done on the web (Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2004). However, for disabled persons, barriers experienced when interfacing with the Internet may cause healthcare websites to be inaccessible to them. This study explores the level of accessibility of healthcare websites and the relationship between accessibility and usability by determining how compliant state department of health and human services websites are with accessibility and usability guidelines. A content analysis of each state’s department of health and human services website was conducted. Results revealed that state department of health and human services websites are not very compliant with accessibility guidelines, are somewhat compliant with usability guidelines, and overall are not very accessible. The findings also indicate that there is a significant moderate relationship between accessibility and usability which suggests that the two concepts are interconnected.

Embora seja considerável a quantidade de materiais educacionais disponíveis na Internet, poucos são os estudos reportados na literatura que tratam de investigar a efetividade dos mesmos como ferramenta de ensino. Neste trabalho descrevemos a elaboração, uso e avaliação de um sítio produzido como material de apoio para a disciplina de Química Analítica. As facilidades disponíveis no sítio são: páginas de conteúdo com descrições textuais dos tópicos discutidos na disciplina, hiperlinks para sítio da Web que oferecem conteúdo relevante ao curso, um fórum eletrônico que permite aos estudantes postarem questões e aos instrutores responde-las, um glossário, uma sala de bate-papo e uma ferramenta para escrita e envio de relatórios. Participaram, voluntariamente, como sujeitos da pesquisa dois professores de química, um estagiário do Programa de Aperfeiçoamento de Ensino da Universidade de São Paulo e 32 alunos de graduação em química. A navegação de cada um deles no sítio foi monitorada. Dados foram também coletados a partir da realização de entrevistas semi-estruturadas com os professores e da aplicação de questionários aos alunos. Durante o semestre em que foi utilizado pelos alunos da disciplina de Química Analítica, o sítio foi acessado 560 vezes. O sítio foi usado, principalmente, para a escrita e envio de relatório e para consulta às páginas de conteúdo. Poucos alunos fizeram uso do fórum para entrar em contato com os instrutores ou para apresentar questionamentos. O uso que os estudantes fizeram do sítio sugere que são capazes de utilizar o material suplementar para sanar dúvidas sobre conteúdos específicos. As entrevistas com os professores mostraram que nenhum deles havia utilizado anteriormente a Web como ferramenta de apoio na disciplina de Química Analítica. Os questionários aplicados aos estudantes apontaram para a percepção de que o acesso a materiais educacionais disponibilizados via Web é útil e pode contribuir para o aprendizado dos mesmos. / Despite the proliferation of educational material on the Internet, few published studies document the strengths and weaknesses of using the World Wide Web as a teaching tool. This work describes the design, use, and evaluation of a site created as a supplement to the Analytical Chemistry course. The site included the following elements: content pages with textual descriptions of the concepts discussed, hyperlinks to Web that provide information about topics in chemistry that are relevant to the course, an eletronic forum that enables students to pose questions and instructors to answer them, glossary, a chatroom and a tool for writing and sending reports. The results presented here will allow us to determine how best to develop other WWW resources and how best to utilize the site discussed here. The research population consisted of two chemistry professors, one teaching assistant and 32 undergraduate chemistry students who voluntarily participated in this research. All navigation for each subject was recorded. Research tools also included semi-structured personal interviews with faculty and teaching assistant, and a student´s survey. During the semester of use, the site was accessed 560 times. The site was mainly used for writing and sending reports and reading content pages. Only a few students used the forum to contact instructors and ask them questions. The analysis of student use of the site suggests that they are able to identify the areas that cause them trouble and are able to use supplemental resources to help them in those areas. Interviews with professors indicated that none of them had used the Web as support to the teaching in the Analytical Chemistry course. Analyzing the student\'s survey, we found that they noted that access to Web-based learning materials was valuable and contributed to their learning as well.

Embora seja considerável a quantidade de materiais educacionais disponíveis na Internet, poucos são os estudos reportados na literatura que tratam de investigar a efetividade dos mesmos como ferramenta de ensino. Neste trabalho descrevemos a elaboração, uso e avaliação de um sítio produzido como material de apoio para a disciplina de Química Analítica. As facilidades disponíveis no sítio são: páginas de conteúdo com descrições textuais dos tópicos discutidos na disciplina, hiperlinks para sítio da Web que oferecem conteúdo relevante ao curso, um fórum eletrônico que permite aos estudantes postarem questões e aos instrutores responde-las, um glossário, uma sala de bate-papo e uma ferramenta para escrita e envio de relatórios. Participaram, voluntariamente, como sujeitos da pesquisa dois professores de química, um estagiário do Programa de Aperfeiçoamento de Ensino da Universidade de São Paulo e 32 alunos de graduação em química. A navegação de cada um deles no sítio foi monitorada. Dados foram também coletados a partir da realização de entrevistas semi-estruturadas com os professores e da aplicação de questionários aos alunos. Durante o semestre em que foi utilizado pelos alunos da disciplina de Química Analítica, o sítio foi acessado 560 vezes. O sítio foi usado, principalmente, para a escrita e envio de relatório e para consulta às páginas de conteúdo. Poucos alunos fizeram uso do fórum para entrar em contato com os instrutores ou para apresentar questionamentos. O uso que os estudantes fizeram do sítio sugere que são capazes de utilizar o material suplementar para sanar dúvidas sobre conteúdos específicos. As entrevistas com os professores mostraram que nenhum deles havia utilizado anteriormente a Web como ferramenta de apoio na disciplina de Química Analítica. Os questionários aplicados aos estudantes apontaram para a percepção de que o acesso a materiais educacionais disponibilizados via Web é útil e pode contribuir para o aprendizado dos mesmos. / Despite the proliferation of educational material on the Internet, few published studies document the strengths and weaknesses of using the World Wide Web as a teaching tool. This work describes the design, use, and evaluation of a site created as a supplement to the Analytical Chemistry course. The site included the following elements: content pages with textual descriptions of the concepts discussed, hyperlinks to Web that provide information about topics in chemistry that are relevant to the course, an eletronic forum that enables students to pose questions and instructors to answer them, glossary, a chatroom and a tool for writing and sending reports. The results presented here will allow us to determine how best to develop other WWW resources and how best to utilize the site discussed here. The research population consisted of two chemistry professors, one teaching assistant and 32 undergraduate chemistry students who voluntarily participated in this research. All navigation for each subject was recorded. Research tools also included semi-structured personal interviews with faculty and teaching assistant, and a student´s survey. During the semester of use, the site was accessed 560 times. The site was mainly used for writing and sending reports and reading content pages. Only a few students used the forum to contact instructors and ask them questions. The analysis of student use of the site suggests that they are able to identify the areas that cause them trouble and are able to use supplemental resources to help them in those areas. Interviews with professors indicated that none of them had used the Web as support to the teaching in the Analytical Chemistry course. Analyzing the student\'s survey, we found that they noted that access to Web-based learning materials was valuable and contributed to their learning as well.

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The creation of a new travel website in the early 21st century can naively be mistaken as an easy open window to the world. LuminariaTravel.com is an online travel website recently created to inform visitors about San Antonio, Texas tourism. This paper seeks to analyze the challenges and offer solutions in entering an online market already entered. This paper presents insight into understanding the tourism industry online, and current marketing methods being used. In order for the small, privately-owned travel website to gain online visitors, LuminariaTravel.com must consider utilizing marketing tools for an integrated marketing plan. Luminariatravel.com must also be correctly positioned in the online travel market to have a unique stance and be able to communicate information that will set it apart from other San Antonio travel websites. This paper will include literature reviews and an industry case study. A final recommended marketing plan and strategy will be offered to LuminariaTravel.com / text

This research explored the phenomenon of online social network in the context of consumer-brand relationship. The specific research objectives were: (a) to examine whether perceived benefits of a Brand’s Social Network Website (BSN) predict BSN relationship quality; (b) to investigate whether perceived benefits of BSN predict perceived relationship investment; (c) to examine if online social connection strengthens the relationship between perceived benefits of BSN and BSN relationship quality; (d) to examine if experience with BSN strengthens the relationship between perceived benefits of BSN and BSN relationship quality; (e) to investigate whether BSN relationship quality predicts brand relationship quality; (f) to examine whether BSN relationship quality predicts customer loyalty toward BSN; (g) to investigate whether perceived relationship investment predicts brand relationship quality; (h) to investigate whether brand relationship quality predicts customer loyalty toward BSN; (i) to examine whether brand relationship quality predicts customer loyalty toward the brand; and (j) to investigate whether customer loyalty toward BSN predicts customer loyalty toward the brand. This research employed a mixed-method approach to overcome the weaknesses in a single method approach and to provide stronger evidence for a conclusion. First, qualitative analyses explored the unique context of BSN, which was not much investigated in prior research. Specifically, Brand Pages of 22 apparel brands and 10 restaurant/coffeehouse brands, chosen as research settings, were investigated to validate the proposed research constructs. Second, quantitative analyses utilized an online self-administered cross-sectional survey method. A total of 501 complete responses collected from consumer panels of marketing research firm were used. The results suggested that BSN benefits are important drivers of relationship mediators (i.e., BSN relationship quality, perceived relationship investment), which in turn positively influence BRQ. However, functional benefits did not influence BSN relationship quality. In addition, while customer loyalty toward BSN was predicted by both BSN relationship quality and BRQ, it did not positively influence the loyalty toward the brand. Specifically, BSN loyalty did not influence behavioral loyalty and negatively influenced willingness to pay price premium. Further discussion about the results, implications, and suggestions for future research were provided.

This diploma thesis deals with the methods of creating a community website from an initial idea to the steady process of developing the site. Overall, the thesis is divided into a theoretical part and a practical part, where the particular methods are analyzed and applied to the web project Ara.cz. The theoretical part focuses on defining the major reasons of creating the community website and the particular stages of formation and development of the site. The thesis does not deal with the technical aspects of the site, but only with the methods and procedures leading to the creation of a successful community website. Overall, output of the theoretical part is a summary of all methods and procedures including, how to create a community within the website and subsequently how to maintain it and develop it. The practical part of the thesis then deals with how to apply the procedures and methods specifically to the real project Ara.cz. Based on the analysis and market research an appropriate strategy is suggested for the future development of the website. At the end of the thesis are ways of promoting the website and its visibility on the internet, together with methods of monetization of the website which are formulated.

The World Wide Web has emerged as a powerful communications medium. With the development of new technologies, organizational websites are getting bigger and more complex, using design elements such as sound and motion to engage users' attention. This project will look at how users respond to the ways designers and developers present information on the web in a dynamic form which incorporates sound and motion. The research will focus on evaluating the communicative effectiveness of websites (particularly websites with different degrees of dynamic content in them), and will see if certain ways of presenting dynamic content are more effective than others. The method used will consist of observing users while they try to accomplish specific tasks on selected websites, through interviews, questionnaires and through verbal protocol ('think aloud') analysis. Effectiveness will be measured by such things as how long it takes them to complete each task, how successful they were in finding the necessary information, and the ease of use. Other factors which provide possible explanations for differences in effectiveness will also be measured; these will be drawn from two theoretical bases: communication theory (Fiske, 1982) and social psychology (Ajzen, 1991; Klobas & Morrison, 1999). The outcome of the research will be identification of problem areas associated with the effectiveness of information delivery by dynamic sites. Guidelines for communication designers, information architects and developers of websites, as they evaluate the success of dynamic sites, will be an appendix to the research.

The theme of the present thesis is a content-based website. The paper defines the concept presented on a model of layers functioning content-based website and analyses its functioning from the perspective of systems theory on the basis of identified major transformation functions bound to the operation of the web content. The reader will be acquainted with the model of content distribution on the website and the possibilities of financing its operations. Formulated hypotheses are testing possibilities of return on investment using specific advertising possibilities; validity of these hypotheses is then tested on the data collected during operation of the specific content sites. Than the problem of processes taking place in creating web content is further analyzed. There is a practical example of selection and implementation of an information system built to support the creation of content on a particular website: analyzing operating processes, it describes how the selection of appropriate resources and their deployment is made. The goal of this thesis is to help answer the question whether the operation of the content-based website may be financed by advertising the location of elements, identify what kind of processes are operated in content creation site, and state how to select and implement an information system to support them.