Imagine Your E-commerce Presence

What’s the idea? (The visioning process)

◦ Before you can plan and actually build an e-commerce pres
ence, you need to have a vision of what you hope to accom
plish and how you hope to accomplish it.
◦ It starts with a dream of what’s possible, and concludes wit
h a timeline and preliminary budget for development.
◦ For examples:
 Amazon: To become the largest marketplace on earth
 Facebook: To make the world more open and connected
 Google: To organize the world’s information and make it universally
accessible and useful
 Theknot: To be the Internet’s comprehensive, one-stop wedding pl
anning solution
Imagine Your E-commerce Presence
Where’s the money: Business and revenue model
◦ You will need to develop a preliminary idea of your busin
ess and revenue models (a general idea of how your busi
ness will generate revenues.
◦ Basic business models are: portal, e-tailer, content provi
der, transaction broker, market creator, service provider,
and community provider (social network).
◦ The basic revenue model alternatives are: advertising, su
bscriptions, transaction fees, sales, and affiliate revenue.
◦ There’s no reason to adopt a single business or revenue
model, and in fact, many firms have multiple models.
Imagine Your E-commerce Presence
Who and where is the target audience
◦ There are two questions here:
 Who is your target audience?
 Where can you best reach them?

◦ Your target audience can be described in a number of w

ays: demographics, behavior patterns (lifestyle), current
consumption patterns (online vs. offline purchasing), digi
tal usage patterns, content creation preferences (blogs &
social networks), and buyer personas (profiles of your ty
pical customer).
◦ Understanding the demographics of your target audience
is usually the first step.
Imagine Your E-commerce Presence
What is the field? Characterize the marketplace
◦ Enter into a declining market filled with strong competitors, a
nd you will multiply your chances of failure.
◦ Enter into a market that is emerging, growing, and has few co
mpetitors, and you stand a better chance.
◦ Enter a market where there are no players, and you will either
be rewarded handsomely with a profitable monopoly on a suc
cessful product no one else thought of or you will be quickly f
orgotten because there isn’t a market for your product at this
point in time.
◦ In addition, you will want to know about the structure of the
market: direct competitors, suppliers, and substitute products.
Imagine Your E-commerce Presence
Where’s the content coming from?
◦ The content is why your customers visit your site a
nd either purchase things or look at ads that genera
te revenue for you.
◦ Therefore, the content is the single most important
foundation for your revenue and ultimate success.
◦ There are generally two kinds of content:
 Static content is text and images that do not frequently ch
ange, such as product descriptions, photos, or text that yo
u create to share with your visitors.
 Dynamic content is content that changes regularly, can be
created by you, or increasingly, by bloggers and fans of yo
ur Web site and products.
Imagine Your E-commerce Presence
Know yourself: Conduct a SWOT analysis
◦ A SWOT analysis is a simple but powerful method for strate
gizing about your business and understanding where you s
hould focus your efforts.
◦ Lack of financial and human resources are typically the bigg
est weakness of start-up sites.
◦ Threats include competitors that could develop the same ca
pabilities as you, and low market entry costs, which might
encourage many more start-ups to enter the marketplace.
◦ Once you have conducted a SWOT analysis, you can consid
er ways to overcome your weaknesses and build on your st
rengths.
Imagine Your E-commerce Presence
Develop an E-commerce presence map
◦ E-commerce has moved from being a PC-centric activity on the
Web to a mobile and tablet-based activity as well.
◦ While 80% or more of e-commerce today is conducted using PC
s, increasingly smartphones and tablets will be used for purchasi
ng.
◦ An e-commerce presence requires firms to consider the four diff
erent kinds of presence (Web site/App, social media, e-mail, and
offline media), and the platforms and activities associated with e
ach type of presence.
◦ Offline media, the fourth type of e-commerce presence, is includ
ed here because many firms use multiplatform or integrated ma
rketing where print ads refer customers to Web sites and apps.
Imagine Your E-commerce Presence
E-commerce presence map
Imagine Your E-commerce Presence
Develop a timeline: Milestones
◦ It’s a good idea for you to have a rough idea of the time fram
e for developing your e-commerce presence when you begin.
◦ You should break your project down into a small number of p
hases that could be completed within a specified time.
◦ The next table illustrates a one-year timeline for the developm
ent of a start-up Web site.
◦ Note that this example timeline defers the development of a
mobile plan until after a Web site and social media plan have
been developed and implemented.
◦ There is a growing trend, however, to flip this timeline around
, and begin with a mobile plan instead.
 Imagine Your E-commerce Presence
 E-commerce presence timeline
PHASE ACTIVITY MILESTONE
Phase 1: Planning Envision e-commerce presence; determine Mission
personnel statement
Phase 2: Web site Acquire content; develop a site design; arrange Web site plan
development for hosting the site
Phase 3: Web Develop keywords and metatags; focus on A functional Web
implementation search engine optimization; identify potential site
sponsors
Phase 4: Social Identify appropriate social platforms and A social media
media plan content for your products and services plan
Phase 5: Social Develop Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest Functioning
media presence social media
implementation presence
Phase 6: Mobile Develop a mobile plan; consider options for A mobile media
plan porting your Web site to smartphones plan
Imagine Your E-commerce Presence
How much will this cost?
◦ How much you spend to build a Web site depends on how
much you can afford, and the size of the opportunity.
◦ In general, the cost of hardware, software, and telecommu
nications for building and operating a Web site has fallen dr
amatically in the last decade, making it possible for very sm
all entrepreneurs to build fairly sophisticated sites.
◦ At the same time, while technology has lowered the costs o
f system development, the costs of marketing, content dev
elopment, and design have risen to make up more than hal
f of typical Web site budgets.
◦ The longer-term costs would also have to include site and s
ystem maintenance.
Imagine Your E-commerce Presence
Components of a Web site budget
Web Site Design: Basic Business Considerat
ions
Ata minimum, your customers will need to find what t
hey need at your site, make a purchase, and leave.
A Web site that annoys customers runs the risk of losin
g the customer forever.
Some critics believe poor design is more common than
good design.
The worst e-commerce sites make it difficult to find inf
ormation about their products and make it complicated
to purchase goods; they have missing pages and broke
n links, a confusing navigation structure, and annoying
graphics or sounds that you cannot turn off.
E-commerce Web Site Features that Annoy Custom
ers
• Requiring user to view ad or
Flash introduction before going
to Web site content
• Pop-up and pop-under ads and
windows
• Too many clicks to get to the
content
• Confusing navigation; no search
function
• Links that don’t work
• Inability to use browser’s Back
button
• Slow loading pages
• Content that is out of date
• Requirement to register and log
in before viewing content or
ordering
• No contact information available
• Unnecessary splash/flash screens,
animation, etc.
• Music or other audio that plays
automatically
• Unprofessional design elements
• Text not easily legible due to size,
color, format
• Typographical errors
• No or unclear returns policy
Important Factors in Successful E-commerce Site D
esign
FACTOR DESCRIPTION
Pages that work, load quickly, and point the
Functionality
customer toward your product offerings
Links that customers can easily find to
Informational
discover more about you and your products
Ease of use Simple foolproof navigation
Redundant navigation Alternative navigation to the same content
Ease of purchase One or two clicks to purchase
Multi-browser
Site works with the most popular browsers
functionality
Avoids distracting, obnoxious graphics and
Simple graphics
sounds that the user cannot control
Avoids backgrounds that distort text or make
Legible text
it illegible
Tools for Web Site Optimizatio
n
A Web site is only as valuable from a business perspective as th
e number of people who visit.
Web site optimization means how to attract lots of people to yo
ur site.
One solution is through search engines such as Google, Bing, As
k, and several hundred others.
The first stop for most customers looking for a product or servic
e is to start with a search engine, and follow the listings on the
page, usually starting with the top three to five listings, then gla
ncing to the sponsored ads to the right.
The higher you are on the search engine pages, the more traffic
you will receive.
Page 1 is much better than Page 2.
How do you get to Page 1 in the natural
(unpaid) search listings?
 Metatags, titles, page contents:
◦ Search engines “crawl” your site and identify keyword
s as well as title pages and then index them for use in
search arguments.
◦ Pepper your pages with keywords that accurately des
cribe what you say you do in your metatag site “descr
iption” and “keywords” sections of your source code.
 Identify market niches:
◦ Be more specific to attract small and specific groups,
and closer to purchasing.
 Offer expertise:
◦ Industry analyses, FAQ pages, guides, and histories a
re excellent ways to build confidence on the part of u
sers and to encourage them to see your Web site as t
he place to go for help.
How do you get to Page 1 in the natural
(unpaid) search listings?
 Get linked up:
◦ Encourage other sites to link to your site; build a blog
that attracts people and who will share your URL with
others and post links in the process.
◦ Build a Facebook page for your company.
 Buy ads:
◦ Complement your natural search optimization efforts
with paid search engine keywords and ads.
◦ See what works, and observe the number of visits to
your site produced by each keyword string.
 Local e-commerce:
◦ If your Web site is particularly attractive to local peopl
e, or involves products sold locally, use keywords that
connote your location, such as “Chiang Mai handicraft
”, so people can find you nearby.
Personalization Tools & the Information Policy
Set
You will definitely want to know how to treat each customer on an
individual basis and emulate a traditional face-to-face marketplace.
Personalization: the ability to treat people based on their personal
qualities and prior history with your site
Customization: the ability to change the product to better fit the n
eeds of the customer
The primary method for achieving personalization and customizati
on is through the placement of cookie files on the user’s client com
puter.
You will need to develop a privacy policy – a set of public stateme
nts declaring to your customers how you treat their personal infor
mation that you gather on the site.