The Five Stages of Customizing Web-Based Mass Information Systems

Abstract

Web-enabled standard software for electronic commerce incorporating adaptive components will reduce the barriers between productive data processing and dispositive data processing like market analysis, Web-tracking, or data warehouses. A conceptual research framework for analyzing the evolution of electronic markets as well as their business ecosystem represents the foundation of a document-oriented modeling technique for analyzing and designing (adaptive) Web-based Mass Information Systems. A Java prototype based on this meta-model is presented which supports cooperative efforts of academic research, IS departments, top-level management, and functional units to map and classify individual and aggregated customer behavior. The symbolic visualization of user clickstreams based on this analysis is intended to streamline the decision processes necessary for implementing, updating and maintaining complex Web-enabled applications.