BACHELOR IN BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

SCHOOL: BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

SEMESTER

E-COMMERCE.

INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT

Prepared for:

Lecturer’s name: Mr. Saboor

Prepared by:

Student’s Name: Umenwa Nnamdi

ID No: Alfa2018-0190

Subject Code: BBA

Deadline date: 14th November, 2020

Contents
Question 1........................................................................................................................................3
Online business platform, its advantages and disadvantages.......................................................3
Advantages –............................................................................................................................4
Disadvantages –........................................................................................................................4
Advantages of paper catalog –.................................................................................................4
Disadvantages –........................................................................................................................5
Question 2........................................................................................................................................5
How to use social media to promote business.............................................................................5
Choose the Right Platforms:.....................................................................................................5
Create a Calendar.........................................................................................................................5
Encourage Engagement:..............................................................................................................5
Don’t Over-Promote:...................................................................................................................5
Share Video..................................................................................................................................6
Address Problems Quickly...........................................................................................................6
Build a Community:.....................................................................................................................6
Provide Value...............................................................................................................................6
Question 3........................................................................................................................................6
3 Ways that online advertising network have improved on marketing techniques.....................6
Web design:..............................................................................................................................7
Search engine optimization (SEO):..........................................................................................7
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising...............................................................................................7
Social media marketing:...........................................................................................................7
Question 4........................................................................................................................................8
Discuss the pros and cons of an e-commerce..............................................................................8
Advantages –............................................................................................................................8
Disadvantages –......................................................................................................................10
Question 5......................................................................................................................................12
Industries likely to use e-commerce and how it works..............................................................12
Shopping via Mobile Apps.....................................................................................................12
Sales from Smartphones and Tablets.....................................................................................12
One-Click Ordering................................................................................................................13
Social Commerce...................................................................................................................13
 Voice Shopping......................................................................................................................13
Question 6......................................................................................................................................13
Increased Reach.........................................................................................................................13
Streamlining, transparency and efficiency.................................................................................14
Better management of suppliers and customers:........................................................................14
More sales..................................................................................................................................14
Analytics....................................................................................................................................14
CITATIONS AND REFERENCES..............................................................................................15
Question 1
Online business platform, its advantages and disadvantages
According to a 2018 study by big commerce, 82% of smartphone users research purchases online
before buying, even if they're buying it in store rather than on online. And a whopping 94% of
B2B shoppers do online research at some point in their buying process. That means the need for
retailers to optimize their digital experiences is greater than ever. Delivering a printed catalog in
the mail and hoping orders will start to come in just won't cut it anymore because the expectation
that you'll find product information and inspiration online is just too great. With online catalogs
you still provide an inspiring product experience while ensuring that product offers are
accessible to potential buyers.

As an example of accessibility done really well, look at Mueller Company. Often, B2B
companies have really extensive product portfolios, resulting in a large number of catalogs. This
complicates the problem of keeping information easily accessible but Mueller worked around
this challenge by organizing all their catalogs centrally with our digital binder (one of paper’s
most popular B2B features, just FYI). What the binder does is organize catalogs into specific
sections (like chapters in a book), so a reader can get an overview of catalog categories and
quickly find the catalog relevant to them. But more than that, the binders are searchable. So
whatever product a shopper is looking for, in any catalog, all they have to do is look up the name
to find it instantly. People like to be inspired with content, which is why traditional catalogs have
been as effective as a sales tool, but with online shopping catalogs you can take it to the next
level by adding videos, animations and other interactive visual elements.

Advantages –
 Increased customer satisfaction and more accurate orders;
 Greater consistency and accuracy in purchasing processes;
 Reduced internal administrative costs - paper, printing, and distribution;
 Reduced costs for associated data processing operations.

Disadvantages –
 Increased competition. With e-commerce not only potential customers increase, but also
direct competitors. ...
 Lack of physical contact with the product.
 Lack of shop assistants. ...
 Lack of confidence is another disadvantage. ...
 Delivery time and shipping costs may sometimes be a deterrent.

Advantages of paper catalog –

 Ease of use
 Sharing information
 The paper catalogue, cornerstone of multichannel strategy
  Attract and project the company’s brand image
 Improving digital marketing with paper catalogues

Disadvantages –
 You can’t make changes once it printed
 Limited space
 Market research limitations

Question 2
How to use social media to promote business
Choose the Right Platforms: There is no shortage of social media sites on which to share your
content. The number of sites is growing every day. Sharing your content on the right platforms is
crucial to your success. When determining which channels to use, you should consider your
customers and your business. It’s important that you create accounts on the platforms your target
audience uses, so they can easily connect with you. Conduct some research to determine what
sites your audience probably uses, and then use them too. You should also consider which sites
best fit your products. For a video production company, for example, YouTube is an obvious
choice.

Create a Calendar: Scrambling to create posts at the last minute can lead to low-quality content.
A lack of organization can lead to repeated posts or a lull in your presence on one of your
channels. Creating social media content calendars can help avoid those mistakes and lead to
more effective posts. Content calendars also help you create goals and strategies for meeting
them, and track your progress toward them. To make a content calendar, use a regular calendar
for each social media channel and plan out your posts in advance, complete with hashtags, links,
images and other content.

Encourage Engagement: Social media should, of course, be social. That doesn’t only apply to
those who use the sites for fun. Businesses need to be interactive, too. In order to take advantage
of social capability, you need to encourage interaction. Post content that people want to read, ask
questions and like, repost and comment on other users’ posts. Doing research on your audience
can help you figure out what they might like.

Don’t Over-Promote: One trap that businesses often fall into is treating social media too much
like regular advertising. You don’t want to blatantly promote yourself in every post. You need to
create content that people will actually enjoy and want to see. Promoting yourself is okay every
once in a while. Some marketers go by the one-in-seven rule, which says that for every one
directly promotional post, six others should be content-based. In these other six posts, you could
share articles, comment on current events or ask a question. You don’t have to entirely avoid
mentioning your brand in these posts; just be careful not to sell too hard.

Share Video: Visual content works well on social media. Video content, especially, is ideal for
grabbing people’s attention as well as conveying your personality and passion to your customers.
Visual content stands out as people scroll through their social feeds, so they’re more likely to
view it and engage with it. It also allows you to say more than you could in a typical post without
taking up much room. Create interesting, narrative-driven video in order to get the best reaction.

Address Problems Quickly: Hopefully you receive mostly positive feedback on social media.
Occasionally you may encounter someone who is upset, argumentative or has something
negative to say about your company. You should carefully monitor mentions of your brand on
social channels, so you can catch issues before they escalate. If you spot a problem, engage with
the person by publicly apologizing if necessary and offering to solve the problem over a direct
message exchange. This way, people who see the post know you were responsive but don’t have
to see all the specifics of the issue.

Build a Community: Instead of trying to get as many followers as possible, focus on finding
customers who are interested, loyal and engaged. These people are more likely to repost your
content, like your posts and become customers. When you build a community around your
brand, the people within that community will engage with each other and help to promote your
content. You could even try reaching out to exceptionally influential social media users and
asking them to help you by reviewing a product or mentioning you in a post.

Provide Value: Perhaps the most important thing you can do on social media is provide value to
your followers. Create something that your audience will find useful. It could be something that
tells them something they didn’t know before, makes them laugh, and entertains them or
anything else that’s beneficial in some way. This aspect of social media is what attracts the right
customers to your business, makes people want to follow you on social sites and helps content to
spread. Master this, and you’ll be a big step closer to a successful social media marketing
campaign. With nearly 3 billion active users, social media is a potential goldmine of new
customers and current patrons who could become repeat customers. Create a good social
campaign, and you’ll be able to connect with some of those people and grow your customer base.

Question 3
3 Ways that online advertising network have improved on marketing techniques
Three ways online advertising networks have improved on, or added to, traditional offline
marketing techniques are they have the ability to precisely track not just consumer purchases, but
all browsing behavior on the Web at thousands of the most popular member sites, including
browsing book lists, filling out preference forms, and viewing content pages. They can
dynamically adjust what the shopper sees on screen including prices. They can also build and
continually refresh high-resolution data images or behavioral profiles of consumers. Various
examples are as follows;

Web design: Your website is one of the most essential parts of your business. It’s your home
online, and where many potential customers will turn for information about your products or
services. In many cases, your website will be the first impression your business makes on
members of your target audience. Since many of your other online advertising campaigns will be
designed to drive traffic to your website, your web design can make or break their success. This
means that your site needs to be effective in attracting and keeping users’ attention and
encouraging them to convert.

Search engine optimization (SEO): Your website can be a great marketing tool — but only if
you’re potential customers can find it. The best way to make this happen is with search engine
optimization or SEO. By investing in SEO, you can improve your website in ways that help it
rank well in search engines like Google for searches related to your products or services. SEO
involves incorporating keywords related to your products or services on your site, so that when
users search those keywords in search engines like Google, relevant pages appear in results. You
can identify the best keywords for your pages by doing keyword research to see what your target
audience is searching, as well as which keywords your competitors are targeting. You want to
choose keywords that are used by your target audience and will attract them to your site.

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising: Pay-per-click, or PPC, is an online advertising model that

allows you to place ads in search engine results for specific keywords. While SEO focuses on
earning rankings through content and optimization, PPC essentially lets you pay for placement
for your target keywords. If you’re new to PPC, Google Ads is the best place to start, because it
allows you to place ads in Google search results. PPC works on a bidding system in which you
select target keywords, then compete with other advertisers to place ads in the search results for
those keywords. If your bid is among the highest, you’ll earn placement above organic search
results — and if someone clicks, you’ll pay your bid amount. One of the biggest advantages of
PPC is that (as the name implies), you only pay when users click on your advertisement. This
means you don’t have to worry about wasting your budget on people who aren’t interested in
your business or ignore your ads.

Social media marketing: Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram present huge
opportunities to reach and connect with your target audience. That’s why these sites are quickly
becoming some of the best ways to advertise online. Social media is a great place to advertise
because there are so many consumers on these platforms. In fact, eighty-one percent of American
adults have a social media profile — meaning the chances are high that at least part of your
audience is active on social media. You can also use social media platforms to run
advertisements for your company. Social platforms let you select your audience based on
standard demographic information like age, gender, and location, as well as advanced options
like interests and behaviors. This allows you to reach the users that are most likely to be part of
your target audience, and maximize your results with each campaign. For example, if you
operate a garage door company, you may use social media to target users within your service
area. Your garage door advertising campaign may go even further, focusing on demographics of
your target audience, like marriage status, age, and gender, to build a better ad.

Question 4
Discuss the pros and cons of an e-commerce
E-commerce continues to accelerate and the amount of money spent on purchases made through
the Internet shows no sign of decline. During the past holiday season (November 20 to December
19), retailers saw online revenues quadruple, jumping 300% to about $11 billion and far
exceeding expectations, according to a study by Shop.org and Boston Consulting Group. The
study of 30 retailers in such categories as apparel, books and music, home and garden, specialty
foods and electronics showed a 270% growth in the number of orders. The study indicated that
online sales were growing at 145% annually and it projected online retailer revenues of more
than $36 billion for last year. An earlier study conducted by Ernst & Young, before the holiday
frenzy, already estimated that total revenues for online retail and consumer products for the
calendar year just completed were around $25-30 billion. Currently, the average rate of returns
for Internet-based companies is 9%. In the coming year the value of returned merchandise was
$1.5 billion. This indicates an amazing opportunity.

Advantages –
Low Financial Cost: One of the ecommerce benefits is that it has a lower startup cost. Physical
retail stores have to pay up to thousands of dollars to rent one of their store locations. They also
have several upfront costs such as store signs, store design, buying inventory, sales equipment,
and more. Physical retail stores also have to pay staff to work and run each location. They may
also need to hire security staff depending on the product value in the store. However, for a drop
shipping store startup costs are estimated at $418 in 2019 and ecommerce stores only pay $3192
a year on Shopify at most for virtual ‘rent’. Shopify also includes an easy to use platform,
hosting, free Shopify themes, great apps like Oberlo, and lots of other great perks. Depending on
what type of ecommerce business you run, you may only need to hire employees when you grow
to a certain level. As your online store is online these employees can work remotely, making it
easier to find staff that will suit your company.

Potential Income: Another advantage of ecommerce is that online stores are always open for
business. With your Facebook ads, you can attract someone at 11 p.m. or 4 a.m. in any part of
the world. Most physical location stores are open between 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. By being available at
all hours, you can attract people who would normally pick up a product in stores, if the store
were open. Think about your audience who don’t work normal hours or who are too busy to pop
into a shop to buy something. An ecommerce store allows you to attract those who may have odd
work schedules or who don’t have time to shop in-person. For a customer to order at night, you
don’t need to have employees working the night shift to ensure all orders get processed. You’ll
never need to hire a security guard! All you need to do is automate your ordering systems so that
customers receive a confirmation email when they place their order to give them peace of mind.

Sell Internationally: Next on the list of ecommerce benefits is that a new brand can sell to
customers around the world easily. You have the ability to discover your audience whether
they’re in the U.K., South America, or neighboring countries. If you choose to drop ship from
Ali Express, many products offer affordable ePacket shipping or free shipping. This allows you
to price and ship your products competitively to a worldwide audience. Selling worldwide is a
great feat as it helps you build your brand a lot faster, broadens your marketplace exponentially,
and allows you to see profit long before your local competitors.

Easy to Showcase Bestsellers: Ecommerce benefits like being able to easily display best-sellers
makes it easier to show off products to customers. While you can design a brick and mortar store
to sway people to buy certain products, it’s easier for a customer to find the best-sellers in an
online store. The reason why you want customers to buy your best-sellers is because they’re
proven. Other customers have already bought them and are happy with their purchase. If you
want to showcase new products to customers you can include them in your upsell, email
marketing or retargeting ads. With an ecommerce store, you can include great product
photography and product descriptions to sway the customer’s choice.
Personalized Online Experience: Website personalization, one of the online business advantages,
can enhance the online shopping experience. Creating personalized landing pages for different
audiences can entice them to buy from you without much extra work on your side. It is not like
customers coming into a physical store who you need to nurture from the first minute. You can
do all the hard work before you launch a campaign and then relax once you release the campaign
to your customer base. Try segmenting your email lists based on purchases made, location or
even how much money a customer spent. You can also retarget a customer who visited your
online store showing them an ad for a product they added to their cart and forgot about. If your
online business has a login feature, you can have a welcome message appear such as ‘Welcome
back (name).’ Product bundles can help the customer buy more for a better price increasing
average order value. You can also personalize upsells based on what the customer has looked at
or what you think they might like based on their purchase behavior.

Disadvantages –
No One Can Buy During a Site Crash: The worst of the ecommerce disadvantages is when no
one can buy from your store if your site crashes. That’s why it’s important to ensure your
website is hosted on the right platform. For example, if you’re paying the minimum hosting fee
and get a surge in traffic from a high converting ad or a television shout-out like Shark Tank,
your site will likely crash. Fortunately, Shopify offers free hosting in their monthly fee allowing
you to have one of the best servers on the market. In recent memory, there was only one time
where sites were down. However, ecommerce stores weren’t the only sites affected. Twitter,
Spotify, Sound cloud, and more were affected by this crash. The issue was resolved the same
day. Yet, site crashes on Shopify are so rare that it’s likely not to cause problems in your
business.

Customers Can’t Try Before They Buy: While this is currently a problem for many retailers, this
won’t be a long-term problem. With augmented reality, more stores are starting to add AR
elements to their store to allow customers to try products on. Augmented reality ecommerce
companies offer solutions for businesses to create a more interactive experience with your
customers. If you own a cosmetics store, you can check out Sephora’s Virtual Artist app for an
example of a beauty retailer with an augmented reality experience.

Ecommerce Is Highly Competitive: Finding the right niche is another one of the worst
ecommerce disadvantages. The reality is the best niches are often the most competitive that’s
why people are drawn to them. The more competitive a niche is, the more expensive ads for that
niche are. There are a couple of ways around this. First, you can go after a different audience
than your competitors. If all your customers are being targeted by competitors through Facebook
ads, you might try ranking organically with SEO optimization. If all your competitors are using
Pinterest, you might try Instagram marketing if your audience are very visual beings. Second, if
your ads are expensive, you can send traffic to blog posts and retarget your customers who visit
them to create lower cost ads. Working on CRO campaigns can help you be much more
successful than your customers.

Customers Can Be Impatient: If a customer has a question in store a salesperson is on the floor
ready to answer them. However, an ecommerce disadvantage is that most businesses experience
a delay responding to customer inquiries. The reality is most customers expect a response from a
business within the hour on social media. If you delay in responding to their message, they can
become angry and shop somewhere else instead. You need to be online 24/7. You can hire
customer service representatives who are trained to make your customers happy via Upwork. Or
you can work with a chatbot to help customers find their answer any time of the day or night. But
this entire still doesn’t equate to a person who is able to look after each person, in person.

You Need to Ship Your Products: Customers consider shipping times to be one of the worst
ecommerce disadvantages. When a customer shops in person she can take the product home right
away. But, with online shopping, most customers receive their products in a week or more.
While Amazon offers same day shipping, it wasn’t a profitable model until they created Amazon
Prime. It only became profitable because they have tens of millions of Prime members. The
solution is to be transparent with your customer. Let them know when they can expect packages
when they place an order.

Question 5
Industries likely to use e-commerce and how it works
Mobile technology has changed the way we live. Our smartphones are seemingly always within
an arm’s reached and dictate our daily habits. As a result, mobile commerce trends are evolving.
Consumer buying behavior has changed drastically over the years, and mobile commerce will
continue to thrive in the future. Mobile commerce is on pace control 73% of the global
ecommerce market share by 2021, up from 59% back in 2017. Over the last six months, 79% of
mobile users made an online purchase using their mobile devices. As an ecommerce store owner,
you need to stay up to date with the latest mobile commerce trends. Whether you’re using
Shopify or another platform to sell online, you can’t ignore mobile consumers. That’s what
inspired me to create this guide. I’ve researched and analyzed the most recent trends in the
ecommerce industry, and narrowed down the ones for m-commerce. The following ten trends
will dominate in 2020.

Shopping via Mobile Apps: It’s no secret that consumers are using their mobile devices to buy
online. We’ve already discussed how m-commerce is dominating the global ecommerce market
share. But the way people are using those devices to shop is changing. In 2019, 57% of US
consumers used a mobile retail app to learn more about a product. Rather than using an Internet
browser, more than half of US shoppers went straight for a mobile app to accommodate their
shopping needs. This is a game-changer for Shopify store owners.

Sales from Smartphones and Tablets: With mobile shopping on the rise, it’s no surprise that sales
from smartphones will dominate 2020. Consumers are doing more than just browsing via apps;
they’re buying. The average order value from a mobile app is $102 compared to $92 from a
mobile website. But mobile apps and mobile sites can be accessed from multiple devices. For the
most part, you can segment mobile devices into two categories; smartphones and tablets.
One-Click Ordering: The shift to shopping from mobile apps will ease the checkout process in
2020. Placing an order online has historically required quite a bit of information from the
consumer.

Social Commerce: Brands using social media to gain exposure and build brand awareness is
nothing new. I’m sure (and I hope) that you’re already leveraging social media for your
ecommerce business. While social media has a tremendous amount of upside, historically, it’s
been challenging for businesses to convert social traffic into sales. There’s always been too much
friction between navigating from a social post to a product page. But social commerce has
evolved.

Voice Shopping: Voice assistants like Siri and Alexa have been growing in popularity over the
years. Furthermore, the way voice search is being used has shifted as well. At first, people used
voice search for things like weather-related questions. Or maybe telling their smart speaker to
play music. In 2020, voice search has penetrated the ecommerce market. Voice shopping is
expected to reach $40 billion by 2022. That’s up from a modest $2 billion in 2018, which is a
1,900% increase in just four years.

Question 6
B2B ecommerce is valuable in describing transactions which happen between the online
businesses. Notably, this refers to the B2B portals which allow advertising and buying of
services and inventory amongst businesses in the same industry. The merits of doing business in
this manner are a lot, for instance, increased reach and sales, transparency and a lot more.
Wayfair is an example of the ecommerce business. It has over 8 million products from 10,000
various suppliers. It offers coupons for discount. B2B organizations currently think of
ecommerce differently. Electronic selling is a way to boost revenue and drive customer
acquisitions. It is a manner of differentiating from the competition.

Increased Reach: The B2B portals of ecommerce offer a way of increasing reach to customers
and making your organization and products known by more potential customers. There are a lot
of business directories all around the world, Yelp in the US, Akama in Canada or SavvySME in
Australia. The presence of web pages which show what the organization involves, people
browsing in the search engine will see your pages and hence represent imminent business
opportunities as well as sales. When you set your pages as private, you may still expand reach by
focusing your content on the web store to specific markets. It offers you the chance to be various
places at once; this will boost the potential interactions of business to enjoy. Containing public-
facing catalogs is the best way to get to new B2B clients.
Streamlining, transparency and efficiency: The B2B ecommerce will streamline your customer
interactions by enabling the process of ordering be reliable and efficient. This is vital in the
current climate of commerce where there are high demand and short time. Through operation out
of the web portal, all ordering may be merged with the ERP (enterprise resource planning)
software so that the delay time between dispatch and ordering is negligible. Mistakes in the
ordering process or order fulfillment regarding stock counts that are inaccurate may be prevented
since up-to-date counts from your warehouse is integrated into your website, this allows sales
agents and customers to always know what is available. Through the ERP, customers can order
online when they want to and the client service can focus on real client service duties instead of
being just order takers and the necessity of relay information in independent systems is removed.

Better management of suppliers and customers: The concept of B2B ecommerce offers better
management of both the suppliers and customers. Essentially, the whole initiative is a win-win
for both parties. Your clients will have a custom-made portal for them that shows their browsing
history, all personal details, shipping, and the tracking data as well as a wish or shopping list.
They will have more control of the entire process that not only enables efficiency and
transparency but also eliminates the need of calling to talk to someone just to ask for an update
of an order. Moreover, you will have better management of the suppliers since you can view
what raw inventory is on hand and when, also, you will see the progress of the orders.

More sales: You will not only reach new clients, but ecommerce will also allow you to quickly
implement the automated up-sell and cross-sell program of recommendation, providing
suggestions to clients on your site and making them buy related products or products containing
more functionality and features. The web-based portal, similar to a marketplace, that shows your
products and services, saves a lot of overheads which are a characteristic of the physical
storefront or the physical trade show stall and hence with the reducing overheads, the bottom line
grows.

Analytics: The B2B ecommerce offers the ideal platform for the business to launch an analytics
campaign. Outsource2EU noted “With the help of ecommerce, business is able to easily evaluate
and measure sales effectiveness, product mix, marketing campaigns, inventory turns, client
engagement, and client sales effectiveness”. Google analytics provides ecommerce tracking;
however, integrating analytics with the ERP also offers much more important information with
insights that are actionable.
 CITATIONS AND REFERENCES
A summary for Citing Sources contains brief, general examples without referencing specific
styles.

A recommended online source to various style guides is The Purdue OWL.

A print copy of Cite Right; A Quick Guide to Citation Styles--MLA, APA, Chicago, the
Sciences, Professions and More" is available in the Library in the Reference collection: Ref
PN 171 .F56 L55 2011.

TechTarget: What Is e-Business?

VentureBurn: What Are the Benefits of Ecommerce for Your Business