Task 2
Companies have taken it upon themselves to adopt the strategy of setting up other businesses e-commerce websites. By this I mean that for a small subscription cost we can pay another firm to do the work for us. Let’s have a look at what some of the firms are offering and how we can go about the setup stage.
There are two parts to selling on the Net. Firstly we have the task of getting people to your site, and selling to them once they get there. Both need a combination of technical and marketing skills. So either you need to acquire the skills, or buy someone in to help. The good news is that everything can be self-taught, but there are also plenty of reasonably priced practitioners around.
I shall be using the website as my example business as well as another which shall be written about later on in the document. Ambrow aim to provide businesses with the functionality of an e-commerce website. But exactly what do they suggest is important and how does it relate to my list in the previous task? Let’s have a look.
The system adopted by the company looks at the following key areas. The strategies and items they use shall be in bold, and then my explanation of how it relates to my list shall be written next to it.
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Fully functional catalogue system set up ready to use – This is a good feature, and saves a lot of work for the client, as far as I have said in my list we need to set up the e-commerce web site. This stage falls in to this bracket. The catalogue system will enable the user to put their brands straight in to the “catalogue” in order for users of the website to be able to browse through them, this stage for a day to day user would be a complex task to create.
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Secure server facilities for payment transactions – I have mentioned this briefly in my document, the need for secure services and methods of payment is extremely crucial to the every day user. If we don’t have a secure connection then the chances of money being stolen or the websites being hacked is very great. This is again a tricky proposition for the every day person to implement in to their website, so the service is looking useful so far.
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Designed and integrated into your existing website - This has been mentioned in my list but in an alternative way, this firm is under the assumption that the website has already been created and therefore the e-commerce facilities need to be incorporated in to it. This sometimes isn’t the case and would probably be more beneficial to the client to design, build and implement the e-commerce website all in one go opposed to doing it the other way round.
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Full e-mail support - E-mail is vital for a business and this was outlined in the original task. The e-mail serves will be looked after by the firm and they will obviously control features such as maintenance and upgrades if necessary.
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Unlimited number of products (you pay for web space separately) – This is a very useful service and means that the business has no limitations in the amount that it can sell. Therefore if the business becomes very successful and they need to expand then there are very little limitations on the quantity of products that can be displayed.
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Hooks up with the major on-line credit card providers easily – This is very important as the link with major credit cards will not limit the businesses potential custom. The majority of people buying online will be using a major credit card and this will make it easier for them to buy.
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Uploading of your own images – Provides a interface that’s personal to that of the owners of the business meaning they have a control over the look of the website, this is very useful for displaying images of the products and so on.
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Full on-line control of your catalogue yourself after set up – This then means that the business owner can update their products as and when they are needed to without having to go back to the setup firm
As we can see the majority of the services offered by the firm are the same as what I have outlined in task 1 of this document, the only thing that is different is the fact that this firm already presume the website is built already. This may be a problematic thing as some people adopt everything at the same time and this doesn’t cater for that possibility. The fact that the services allows the user to take full control over the catalogue is very good, this means that it is in their full control whilst if anything goes wrong they can still ask for the support and service of the people that created and implemented it in the first place.
Now we have looked at one firm that supplies the services of setting up an e-commerce site, let’s have a look at another. This time I shall be using the website as my example. This firm opposed to the last one I looked at offer the complete package for website design and would be the better, but probably more expensive option for a new time e-commerce business. As we can see below they offer a whole list of functionalities, the main being the setup of the e-commerce customised shopping cart.
As we can see they offer affordable services and this is something that should be considered greatly by small businesses as they don’t know at first how there new business venture is going to fair. They offer a basic web package so at least this time everything is all included, and even if you have a website already then they offer a complete redesign. The redesign is useful even if it’s not taken up on. Again, if the site goes down the business need not worry as they will have maintenance as and when it is required. The graphics and design is offered as well as the domain name registration. The domain name registration is very good, this offers the chance for the user to have a personalised website address for example, if the business was Karl’s carpets, we could have the website if it wasn’t already in use.
- A custom web design within your budget
- A basic web package is available for the very budget-conscious
- A complete redesign of your existing website
- Website maintenance as you need it
- Graphic designs for your website
- Domain name registration
- Yearly hosting at a very competitive rate
- E-Commerce setup, including customized shopping cart
- Content writing and management
- Programming customized to your needs
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Search Engine ranking
Search engine optimisation as I said in the task one of this assignment is a key consideration that needs to be considered, this will allow for more hits on the website and for people to use it and by things.
One thing I have noticed however is that no one of the two offer any form of marketing per se. Obviously we have the domain name and the SEO but other than that we have nothing, this will then incur extra costs going elsewhere and is an important consideration. What can be said though is that if the users go to a nicely designed website with graphics and multimedia that looks professional they are more likely to buy, the design, the build and the quality needs to feel great, if this is achieved then successful purchases will happen and the more chance for repeat business will occur.
Below is a list of what should be considered in an e-commerce site that will make it attractive and user friendly.
- Firstly we want to keep the clicks to a minimum. Every time you ask someone to click again, they have the option to forget your site and go elsewhere.
- Start selling and get “Add to cart” buttons in front of them as soon as possible.
- Address people’s concerns. Some people are worried about credit card security, so reassure them. Some won’t ever buy by credit card over the net, so give them an alternative. Provide a physical address and telephone number as this builds confidence and trust.
- Keep on asking the question, what would I want if I was the buyer?
If the above steps are considered regularly and reviewed over a long period of time we can deduce hat the site will remain successful and user friendly, a user friendly site is what we are trying to achieve more than anything, as after all, if we are being serious about the venture then we will realise the site is for the attraction, the benefits and the needs of the users and nobody else.
Task 3 – D3
E-commerce
In this task I shall be outlining a strategy that could be used for an organisation that would support the use of e-commerce. It will take in to consideration the cost and time resources and will include an impact analysis model for the existing organisation culture.
E-commerce for any business has got to be a definite consideration, merely for the opportunities that is presents business owners with. Let’s have a look at my outline strategy for a proposed business.
Firstly we need to devise a diagram this going to outline all of the areas that are going to need to be included as part of the creation of an e-commerce business, this can be seen below;
Now we have considered what needs to be involved in the e-commerce business we need to have a look in more depth to see what these steps actually will involve. This can be seen below;
So above are the details of the breakdown of the involved processes and requirements that need to be thought off. By for the analysis of the impact we need to take in to consideration the costs, what’s going to increase the revenue (or what has the greater chance of increasing the revenue) and other thoughts like this. This will be the form of my impact analysis model.
Impact Analysis Model
Cost and Time Considerations
Web site
We can see that in the table above we have given rough price guides to how much these items will cost in relation to our website that we will have for e-commerce. Firstly we need to think do we need to build the website, if so, we need to ask what skills we have. We need to evaluate this first as the time limit is going to become lengthy if we have to learn a whole set of new languages and software packages in order to get the site to our desired specifications. Further to this we need to no what it is the user wants, in this case we would ask do they want a simple but effective layout?
I am personally going to suggest that all of them will increase productivity within the company, with the obvious to be stated, the more you spend the more you get. However, as a business just starting out we should be looking at the HTML option, possibly incurring the most basic of layouts, whilst maintaining a professional look to it. This will ultimately save us money and still provide the interface needed by customers. Also, it’s easier to accomplish by the average home user so there need not be too much learning taking place as we could use the WYSIWYG editors such as front page, this then makes it time efficient.
Branding/Marketing
All the prices in the table above have been gathered off of the internet and our rough prices only. However to stress, the television and radio are somewhat more expensive than advertising on the internet. The good thing about doing this is that the internet has a large percentage of users and we therefore maximise the amount of people that use our site for a smaller price. To be honest, I believe local free ads and shops to be another good idea, these are smaller price and used by customers daily. Also however we have the option of expanding our campaign in the future dependant on whether we think it would be a good idea or not when our income / revenue have increased.
Search engine optimisation is the most key point here, for a small price we can pay a professional to tweak our website in order for it to rise in the search engine rankings, by doing so we can maximise the users that visit our site. This also is very time efficient meaning that the process shouldn’t take to long, this includes the local shops advertising which is also quite time and cost efficient.
Security
The price ranges for the security really do vary as well as the quality of service that you get. The standard service is normally free and fine for every day users. But, for businesses we need something a little more professional and something which has more functions. These functions are as follows;
Not only does it offer the business far greater security but it offers mail checks and on site scanning, this is definitely needed when there is money and personal details involved. The daisy chain servers is definitely worth consideration, however at first the size of the firm will be too small to implement this, also we need to realise the networking the servers will take a professional which will cost us money.
Overall I would definitely use the increased security package and it takes no time to sue at all making it very time efficient, all that needs to be done is for the programme to be installed and away we go, however for the programme to be updated it must be connected to the internet.
Employees
We have two options when it comes to employment, firstly we could employ a professional, who would then control the entire on goings to do with the business, and this will be costly but efficient. The thing that needs to be determined is whether we will be working in our spare time or not. Mostly if we are skilled enough we should take charge of it. This would be a little les time efficient as jobs wouldn’t get completed as quickly
Location
The storage space is really dependant on what the e-commerce site is going to be selling or offering, in most cases using your home address as the primary location is going to be fine and have absolutely no impact on the performance of the business what so ever. What we do need to remember is that the bigger the firm gets the more it needs to expand and simply working from home will not be suitable.
Money Exchange
These are really important features that need to be considered, money and payment is what is going to help the business succeed, and after all, the businesses main aim is to make a profit. Using pay pal is free and a safe way if allowing people to pay for goods and items over the internet. Implementing this again is easy and won’t mean we have to pay a professional for their services. On top of this we have the other options, shopping basket software is downloadable and some of it is free although I do recommend paying for a brand. For example we have the services that are offered by osCommerce.com plus other firms out there.
Productivity wise they are all going to increase how well the business functions, in most cases I would implement all three of the choices in the table and therefore we don’t limit how people can pay.
Web Hosting
There are many firms that we can use but most importantly is the effect that they will have on the impact of the business. We can see above that there are 2 types, but the subscription fee would be the best to adopt, this is because there are more services specifically offered to businesses. Essentially there isn’t a massive fee to be paid and when put in to context we can see that we are going to save money. In relation to time we can see that there is very little difference, we don’t actually have to do too much here only pick what type we need. Furthermore, the free one gives us plenty of advertising from other companies that we typically don’t want when we upload our site, the only other firms we wish to have advertised on our sites are that of our affiliates.
Equipment
In the equipment properties we could have carried on listing and listing items until we had no money left. But that really wouldn’t be advisable. So to be more logical we have the above, all will increase the productivity of the business massively. Firstly the computers, the computers are integral as we will not be able to run the business otherwise, the quality of computer doesn’t matter to much although an up to date model would be better. Internet connection is another must have and again incurs a cost but not to big, also in this stage we could opt for a business broadband line which would then give us optional extras like mail addresses for the business, this will definitely impact upon productivity. Accounting software is very important as we will need to keep track of our profits, although this can be done in excel so this isn’t as important as buying Office. Office will be really important, will increase turnover and is relatively cheap for how often it would be used. Overall for time and costs I would implement all of the above except for sage accounts.
Outline Strategy
Now I have looked at every stage and created an impact analysis model I can see hat I believe to be necessary or useful whilst referencing them to the costs of each service. This has been extremely helpful and helped me eliminate possibly some really expensive methodologies that would have not increased productivity. Let’s have a look below at my 1st year proposals for the business.
- HTML/CSS website built by either the creator or a professional
- SEO and local shops for advertising
- Increased security package for business
- Take charge personally for the website
- Work From Home
- Include Pay Pal, and include basket and credit card payments
- Use and buy, computers, office, and dedicated business broadband
These are all subject to change as the business increases but overall I believe there is a successful blend of experienced, dedicated software and knowledge whilst maintaining time and cost efficiency. The business owner must be prepared to put in a lot of work themselves else there will be no money left as profit when expenditure is accounted for.