The case studies in the three retail organizations and the engineering and financial services
organizations studied also revealed that there is a need to continually update the Web site registration
with Internet search engine and Internet directory vendors in order to ensure that potential users can
easily find the organization’s Web site. This may involve changes to the Web site coding to ensure that
it contains appropriate key words and repeats of key words, and that they are located in the appropriate
part of the Web site that is used for key word look up by the different Internet search engines [18].
McKeown and Watson [25] noted the need for a company to ensure that its Web site is found by any
one of the Internet search engines a customer may elect to use. Within the three retail organizations
and the engineering and financial services organizations there was an individual member of staff who
had the responsibility for updating Internet search engine registrations.
There is also the need to update links between the organization’s Web site and other related Web
sites [26]. This needs to be arranged with the other companies/organizations, particularly regarding
the nature of the links between the Web sites; for example, ensuring that users can return to the
organization’s Web site after they have used the link to a related Web site. Updating links to other
organizations was considered important by the IT staff interviewed within the higher education
establishment studied. Collin [24] and Kerr [18] commented on the use of links to related sites and
the use of newsgroups to encourage more visitors to a company’s Web site.
Allocating a specific Webmaster or Webmasters can also be important to ensure that it is established
who within the organization will be responsible for future Web site maintenance. The two larger
organizations studied, the manufacturing company (which employed one hundred staff), and the higher
education establishment (which employed approximately two thousand staff), allocated a Webmaster
within their IT department for their Web site. In the five small to medium enterprise organizations,
no particular individual assumed overall responsibility for future Web site maintenance. Pigoski [27]
commented upon the importance of mechanisms being in place to ensure a smooth transition between
the development and maintenance of a software system.
Developing Web site testing procedures is also important to ensure that future Web site maintenance
activities do not introduce errors. Sneed and Goschl [28] commented that testing Web-based
applications is generally more complex than testing client/server and stand-alone systems. One
aspect of this is to test the Web site using the variety of Internet browsers/navigators, versions
of Internet browsers/navigators, Internet search engines and Internet directories that potential users
of the organization’s Web site are likely to use [18]. Sneed and Goschl [28] stated that each
potential connection and the corresponding interface in a Web-based application cause a unique set of
circumstances that has to be tested in all variations. This may be difficult within the organization if the
full range of Internet browsers/navigators and browser/navigator versions is not available internally.
In such instances, Web site maintenance staff may need to use home PCs or equipment in other
organizations (e.g. libraries or Internet cafes) to achieve this. Only the manufacturing and financial
services organizations studied had any formalized Web site testing procedures in place. The Web site
testing procedure in these two organizations mainly covered testing the functionality of individual
Web site pages and the links between the Web site pages. The IT staff in both these organizations
perceived that the introduction of the Web site testing procedures did actually reduce the number of
errors introduced by Web site maintenance activities, but unfortunately had not kept data for this to be
statistically verified.