eCommerce Strategy and Plan

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Mission - what is your business's value to your customers?

Strategy - how will you go about making the business a success?
Technology - choose the technology to support and grow with your business
Stakeholders - identify the partners that will help move the business forward
Engagement - get moving then review and improve as you go

Strategy Overview
A good business plan, whether for eCommerce or any business should cover:
a) Business & Personal Aims - what is your business's mission? What value are you seeking to
provide?
b) Business Objectives - what do you want to achieve?
c) Business Model - how will you achieve those objectives?
d) Tactical Deployment - what do you need to do to achieve those goals?
e) Marketing Requirements and Goals - how will you reach your target customers?
f) Content Gathering and Management - Who will do this and how?
g) Fulfilment and Logistics - Managing your inventory and getting it to customers
h) Financial Management and Payments - including security managment
i) Social Media - strategies to connect with your customers
j) Platform & Technology - what requirements does your business have to achieve the goals
above?
k) Mobile Commerce
l) Maintenance & Management

Strategy Tasks
a) Make sure you know your market - it's best to check in with target customers throughout
the start-up process to ensure your strategy resonates with the value you are seeking to
provide.
b) Multi/Omni-channel - What is important to your customers? Physical presence
c) Integrate the shopping experience - customers what to feel they are dealing with you so all
avenues through to a final sale should feel integrated from their perspective.
d) How you will deal with
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Content - creating it and keeping it up to date

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Pricing & inventory - regular updates and fresh inventory

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Logistics - getting your products to your customers

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Service & support - how do your customers get help from?

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Payment & refund/returns - what will be your policy?

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Security - how will you manage credit card and payment security?

e) Develop an easy-to-use purchase process - minimise clicks and concerns for your
customers
f) Consider localisation requirements - language requirements or multi-currency
g) Consider customer relationship management and personalisation - how will you get and
stay connected with your customers?
h) Make sure that you select a scalable platform or solution - will your technology grow as
you do?
i) Make sure you have a team in place - either staff or support from vendors, associates,
partners or family?
j) Marketing campaigns and requirements - how will you market your business? Online
only? Google Ad-words?
k) Integrate to external systems, suppliers or logistics - what efficiencies do you need to
make sure you are focused on growing your business and don't spend all your time in it on
the day to day tasks?

Strategy Checklist
Business Issues
a) What is your business model - The business model is all important and how you establish
you business may depend on the model. Will you sell to consumers, to businesses, to both.
Will you build a marketplace where lots of businesses can sell together online.
b) What kind of resources will you need - Every busness needs to budget for resources and
you need to ensure that you have the capital to get your venture moving.
c) What is the demographic focus - Who will be your primary buyer? Knowing this can help
you setup the online assets to be more attractive to the demographic that you are targetting.
d) What expertise is available - Self managed and when you need assistance.
e) Tax model - this in many ways relates to the business model B2B or B2C.
f) Domain name/s - your brand and your domain name are linked together for you business.
Choose a domain name that represents your brand and is not being used in other countries.

Technology Issues
a) Business email addresses - helps to develop trust with your customers
b) SSL Certificate (recommended if you accept credit cards) - necessary for security and trust
c) Merchant account and/or PayPal - always collect payments safely and check PCI DSS
Compliance.
d) Which pricing model - relates to the business model and the demographic
e) Shipping and logistics - shipping costs can be a margin eater. In most situations you will be
able to add shipping cost to the total pice. But shipping can be a competitive advantage.
f) Design and user experience - make it easy for the customer to browse and buy on any
device
g) Requirements for custom development - try to avoid having any custom developement
done as this will potentially cause you pain when you need to upgrade or maintain the
website.
h) Mobile and tablets - work on any device
i) Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - SEO can be more costly than traditional marketing so
ensure that you have tools and a strategy to get the most out of the technology
j) Content Marketing - good SEO and good results all start with great content. Remember
Content is King when it comes to the web.
k) Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - digital marketing is all about promoting your business
on the web and bringing customers to your website.
l) Web analytics - once you are selling online you need to be able to track who has been to
your website and what they have done.
m) Web-services for integration