The Growth of Industry Web Portals

Abstract

This article proposes a growth framework for industry web portals which present a new opportunity in the Internet business. The proposed framework contains five stages: business plan stage, website development stage, attraction stage, entrenchment stage, and defense stage. The actions to be taken and strategies to be applied in each stage are set out. Two industry web portals are investigated in detail. The two examples illustrate the applicability of the proposed growth framework to the real world. The combination of a conceptual growth framework and the application of this conceptual framework to two real world examples yields a set of guidelines based in large part on lessons learned from the two examples. Thus, this paper provides a concept-based growth framework and a set of real world-based guidelines that will very possibly provide a practical benefit to industry web portal business practitioners.