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Introduction

BTEC NATIONAL DIPLOMA IN BUSINSS Online Business I have chosen Superdrug as my company to base my assignment on. Every business has aims and objectives to meet, but the main objectives of most businesses are: To increase profits - having an online business enables you to target those people who you possibly couldn't reach before by just having a store, this would just provide an easy access to those people e.g. disabled people. Being online attracts thousands of people to your website which would result in sales increasing rapidly and having global audience can also increase your profits. The other thing that Superdrug should do is to lower their current products prices in order to compete with their competitors and to attract their competitor's customers to their online shopping website. Online businesses pay less rent because they don't need to be located in busy and expensive location e.g. High Street. Having a website for Superdrug would enable them to be worldwide recognised and their brand/logo will be much better known. Online businesses often buy straight from the producer/manufacture, meaning that they pay less for products. To increase sales - online websites targets a wider range of audience e.g. 52 million internet users. By having a website means that customers will be constantly shopping from Superdrug at any time and any day (24/7 shopping). Customers are able to buy from home - no hassle such as traffic, finding parking, queuing, etc. Online businesses are cheap and effective form of advertising which will attract new customers. People from all over the world can buy form the business, not just people who live nearby. Online business provides an easy access to their customer's with disabilities therefore its convenient for them as they don't have to get through a lot of trouble to travel to the nearest store. It also enables company's brand/logo to be widely recognised worldwide. ...read more.

Middle

1) Firstly, before I started to do anything I checked to see if I had access to the internet, if not then I would need to find a suitable Internet Service Provider (ISP) e.g. NTL, this would then provide me with a username password and access phone number allowing access to the Internet and World Wide Web where you can host your website. However, this is what I would have to do if I was making the website at home, but because I was making the website in college I was provided with the internet connection. 2) The second thing I did was to decide what type of business I'm going to have along with the name of the business (universal shoes) and what sorts of products and services will I offer to my consumers in order to be competitive. 3) After I had decided what business I'm going to have, the next step is to decide from a range of authoring tools I can use such as Microsoft FrontPage, Macromedia Dreamweaver and Macromedia Flash, depending on the resources available to me. 4) Now, before I started to use Microsoft FrontPage to make my website, I came up with the design/layout of what my site should look like, and the content of the site. 5) I was now ready to get started on my website straight away. I opened Microsoft FrontPage and saved 4 pages in my documents with their headings e.g. homepage, women's shoes, men's shoes and children's shoes. 6) The next step was to, log into the internet and find suitable pictures for my website. After that I opened Microsoft FrontPage and saved all the relevant pictures in my folder. 7) I then started to decide which colours I am going to use for each page. I gave a pale green colour to the homepage, a pink colour for the women's page, a blue colour to the men's page and finally a pale yellow colour for the children's page. ...read more.

Conclusion

The other weaknesses that I see in my website is not having any information on the history of the business e.g. how it started, who was the founder etc. Having information about the history of your business allows the customers to visualise the effort you put in to start up your business and what obstacles you had to face, this also gives the sense of your personality in terms of how hard working and ambitious you are to achieve your goal. The other thing I'd like to mention is that there is no contact detail on my website which means there won't be any communication between the seller and the consumer, the seller can't promote the products/services to its target audience and the consumer can't give feedback or would have unanswered questions/queries that would drive the customer away which is the last thing you want. Another vital point is to locate your warehouse close by, so when you need to deliver the product to its owner you should be able to do it efficiently and swiftly in order to deliver the product in time and to make sure your customers are satisfied with the service you provided. I think my website facilitates greater freedom of operation to a certain extent. My website is certainly strong in some operations such as diversification, 24/7, location etc. However some of the operations that I felt were considered to be less important while making the website which tends to be the most vital part of a business was advertising. I think my website won't be successful in terms of spreading the message because my website doesn't have a lot to offer in terms of special offers or any other services which is again a downfall to the business success. The only way this can be done is to promote and publish about my website and advertise on popular websites such as ebay, this way I will be attracting many customers to have a look at my website which would result in a rapid increase in profit! ?? ?? ?? ?? 4 Rizwana Hameed ...read more.

This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our AS and A Level ICT in Business section.