The problem with many Web sites, like many good ideas, is that they are easily imitated. because the Web is so public, firms can systematically analyze each other’s Web sites. Consequently, organizations need to be concerned with sustainable attractiveness–the ability to create and maintain a site that continues to attract targeted stakeholders. In the case of a Web site, sustainable attractiveness is closely linked to the ease with which a site can be imitated.
Attractors can be classified by ease of imitation, an assessment of the cost and time to copy another Web site’s concept The easiest thing to reproduce is information that is already in print (e.g., the corporate brochure). Product descriptions, annual reports, price lists, product photographs, and so forth can be converted quickly to HTML, GIFs, or an electronic publishing format such as Adobe’s portable document format (PDF). Indeed, this sort of information is extremely common on the Web, and so bland that we consider it has minimal attractiveness.