3. Web Presence: E-Strategies and Tactics

Amity School of Business

Jitendra Tomar

09650512300
jitendratomar@hotmail.com
jitendratomar@rediffmail.com

Orator


• Part 3:

Web Presence:
E-Strategies and Tactics


Building E-Presence


The Focus
•Web site is the interface between the E-merchant and the Web
consumer. E-commerce is a unique way of doing business. Its
available 24x7, anywhere, and it is accessible to anyone and not
only allows business to display product and services, but also to
sell them.
•Building a Web Site is a major step toward doing business on the
Internet. A website is the gateway to the Internet. Deciding how
to design the site, what to include in it, how to organize its
contents, and what security measures to incorporate are critical
aspects of building an e-commerce infrastructure.

Building E-Presence


The Focus
•The general focus while building E-Presence should be on:
• The main functions of the Website.
• The steps taken to build a Website.
• The importance of planning a Website.
• Factors in website structure.
• Web design criteria
• What to consider while building up a technical team to
develop a Website.

Building E-Presence


Building E-Presence
Your Site can help you.


What does a Website do?
•Reach millions of customers quickly and reliably.
• The customers look for convenience, ease of finding
services or products, and the ability to order directly from
their place.
•Establish a presence in cyberspace.
• The entry-level goal of a new Internet business is presence.
• The new Website displays “who we are” information,
which may include office hours, location, a map showing
how to get to the physical property, and perhaps
featured products.
• Thousands of companies begin at this level before they
turn the site into an interactive trading place.

Your Website can help you


•Leverage advertising costs.
• Unlike radio, TV, or newspapers, where limited time or
space is available at high cost, advertising on the Internet
is cheaper quicker, and limitless.
•Reducing the cost of serving customers.
• A Website can offer a variety of labor saving services-
application forms, information via links or e-mail, and order
handling and shipment without human intervention.
• Answering FAQs on a Website cuts down on phone calls.
• Asking for feedback from customers via e-mail also can
provide information while the experience is fresh in the
customer’s mind.



•Promoting Public Relations.
• A Website on the internet is like passing business card to
thousands of potential customers.
• It is like saying “here is what I do, what I am, and what I
can do for you.” You can reach me anytime, from
anywhere, and I will be available.
• The Website also allows for the timely dissemination of
information about a new product or a special sale.
•Reach International Market and Customers.
• The Internet is populated by millions of prospective
customers all over the world.
• The online population at an instance is the prospective
customer population.


•Test & Market New Product or Service.
• In an increasingly time-sensitive environment where
strategic thinking is critical, the time gap between
manufacturing and retailing is becoming increasingly
narrow.
• One or more webpages can display changes in your
product and service faster than you can disseminate via
any physical medium.



The Building Life Cycle:
From Page to Stage.


Building a Website – It is a Science.
•Site building is a science of figuring out what you as a site
designer want the site to do and then creating a blueprint for
the building process.
•The building life cycle has following steps:
• Plan the Site.
• Define the audience and the competition.
• Build site content.
• Define the site structure.
• Develop the visual design.
•The management focus on these critical issues so as to get the
Website effectively developed.

The Building Life Cycle


Plan the Site.
•Technical Planning Stage – the aim is to provide for quick
application development and deployment. Doing this means
organizing the site, creating an efficient structure for the files and
folders that make up the site.
•Business Planning Stage – includes deciding the Site’s mission,
the short and long term goals of the site, who the intended
audience is, and why people will want to visit the site.
•MIS Planning Stage – includes deciding on how the Website will
tie to core internal process of the organization like inventory
control, database lookup, and the like. It is basically tying down
the value chain functions (ERP, SCM) & decision making process
with the transitions happening on the Website.



Define The Audience And The Competition.
•Determining the audience can pay handsome dividends.
Defining the audience includes not just who the users are, but
their goals and objectives as well.
•The goal of Website design is to enhance site visitor’s
experience by escorting them to the merchandise that best suits
them. Speed and responsiveness are crucial. Always remember
the seven-second rule.
•The second part of this step is competitive analysis. The idea is
to be aware of what other sites are doing. Make a list of your
competitors'’ Websites, evaluate them, and see where your sited
needs work.
•User experience, defining the audience, creating scenarios and
evaluating the competition are part of the design document.



Build Site Content.
•This phase points out what the site will contain.
•The main focus is on gathering the pieces of data & information
for creating and organizing the structure of the site.
•This includes making a list of necessary items like company’s
logo, a product catalog, bio of the company, testimonial page
by loyal customers, a form for placing an order, a hit counter
and the like.
•The preparation of the content is know as Content Inventory
that is circulated to the key department heads or through a
committee to develop the support for the content and build the
consensus before designing a Website.



Define the Site Structure.
•The main focus here is on-
• Creating a good site structure,
• Exploring various metaphors to represent content items,
• Defining the architectural blueprints, and
• Deciding how the user will navigate the site.
•This step ensures easy site navigation and well laid out pages
and templates.
•The structure could be thought of as the skeleton that holds the
entire site together.



Develop the Visual Design.
•The styles, appearance, view-ability & resolution are the key
issues to be focused in this step.
•Page styles, background colors, font size & color, placement of
menus, display of links, placement of navigation buttons,
advertisements & banners, page titles, header and footer,
cascading style sheets are the points to be addressed.
•This could be practiced by using a layout grid which could be
utilized for ideating the page-map.
•Designers also try to give the personalization control to the users
so that they can customize the layout of the Website.
•Designers in today’s date also like to abide by the regulations
like ADA, AARP or similar concepts.



Building a Website:
Design Criteria.


The Design Criteria
•In designing Websites, the primary goal is for visitors to
experience the site as you intended them to.
•If the site presents information, or distributes or sells a product or
service, the visitor must view the site as having credibility.
•A Website is a part of an e-business strategy that should be
designed and managed effectively.
•The key factors to consider are Appearance and Quality
Assurance, public exposure, consistency, scalability, security,
performance, and navigation and interactivity are among the
key factors to consider.

Building a Website


The Design Criteria
•Appearance and Quality Control
• Is the Site aesthetically pleasing? Most Site developers
agree that mixing text with graphics adds interest.
Allowing text to flow around graphics or varying the
margins also tends to make the content more attractive.
• The goal is to make the site easy to read, easy to
navigate, and easy to understand.
• The attractiveness of a Website has a lot to do with quality
assurance. It is a process used to check the readiness of a
site before it is loaded on the Web. Visitors want to trust
the site and be assured that it is reliable and has no
glitches or blips, regardless of the frequency of access.

Building a Website


The Design Criteria
•Public Exposure
• E-Commerce is public. Any mistakes, redundancies,
misrepresentations, oversights, or unauthorized content or
links are immediately displayed for the world to see.
• These problems all have legal, marketing, and public
relations implications.
• The Web designer should verify that content as well as
form are credible and reliable at all times.
• Public exposure also includes site availability –
uninterrupted 24x7.
• To ensure availability, the networking and technology
infrastructure must support the site.

Building a Website


The Design Criteria
•View-ability and Resolution.
• The key question here is whether the site is viewable in
different browsers. The two major browsers and Netscape
Navigator and MS Internet Explorer. Also, everyone uses
different resolutions and screen sizes.
• Although a site will look best at a certain resolution, it
should be viewable in 800x600 without a side-scroll and
also be viewable in 1024x768 and higher without the
background tiling horribly.
•Consistency.
• The site should have the design theme and text theme.
The site should not be restricted with a specific kind of
Browser. It should appear the same on all visitor’s screens.
Building a Website


The Design Criteria
•Scalability.
• Does the site provide a seamless growth path, and does it
have the potential for enhancement or upgrading in the
future?
• Scalability is an important consideration for new Websites
because it is difficult to determine the number of future
visitors. A Website should be capable of being expanded
as usage increases and as needs change.
•Security.
• Protecting a site from hackers is a tricky business,
especially when it comes to deciding on the security
software, encryption algorithm and methodology to
ensure secure trading online.
Building a Website


The Design Criteria
• The Site should show only what the visitor wants to see.
• Websites where access security is critical should run on
dedicated secure server.
•Performance
• From end user’s view, performance is judged based on
how long it take for the page to appear? Sites that are
heavy on text often download instantly. Graphics take
time and can bring downloading of the page to a halt.
• Most search engines have a 45 second timer. If the site
takes longer that 45 seconds to download, it displays the
message “can’t find” or Can’t access site”

Building a Website


The Design Criteria
•Navigation and Interactivity.
• A Website must be logically linked and allow visitors to get
to another page that is on interest to them and then back
to the homepage.
• Icons and buttons should be formatted and laid out to
expedite navigation.
• Excessive Web advertisements can work against
navigation and customer focus. Excessive advertisement
can lead to cluttering, where ads are pasted over, under,
and next to the homepage. These distractions can reduce
the surfer’s interest in what the Website has to offer.

Building a Website


Website:
Project Failure


Why the Website Projects Fail?
Its not always that the Website Development project ends up
with a successful Website. Professional often wonder why
Website projects fail. Here are some reasons:
• Unrealistic Deadlines
• Website designers agree to a completion date when
they have no idea how to meet it.
• In trying to meet such an unrealistic deadline, the team
pushes for an aggressive schedule to accelerate the
work, only to encounter one error after another that
delays the whole Website project.
• To make up for lost time, testing begins to degenerate,
which invariably causes problems after installation.

Project Failure


• Incompetent or inadequate staffing.
• When the project team is short-handed, lacks
competency, or is under pressure to produce miracles,
motivation is the first victim of such arrangements.
• The incompetent developers, when subjected to working
pressure, may fail to produce desired output, resulting in
development of unprofessional Website.
• Poor quality design
• When quality suffers, it is either because of incompetent
staff or trying to meet unrealistic deadlines.
• In the latter case, quality reviews, inspections, and
thorough testing take a back seat, especially when
pressure comes from top management.

Project Failure


• Changing requirement of the client
• This problem has been known for decades to cause
delays in the completion and quality of Website design.
• The constant changes would break the concentration of
the development team. Also restructuring a Website
means new planning and development process, which
may further tighten the deadline.
• The client who keeps making changes could drive the
design team batty.

Project Failure


Website:
The Lame Site


What Lame Sites (Killer Sites) do?
The best way to focus on building successful Websites is to know
the cons of landing up with a Lame site. Even if the Website
Development projects get complete, business may land up
having a Lame site, that will:
• Keep customer clicking away to competitors Website.
• Keep surfers wonder about the kind of product/service the
company provides.
• Fail to upgrade regularly, lack of anything new, innovative,
or attractive, fails to retain the customer.
• Waster visitor’s time by requiring them to fill out tedious
forms, only to find out the Website does not have much to
offer.
• Slow sites use ugly graphics that hardly represent anything
about the firm or its products.
Lame Site


Website:
Website Evaluation


Website Evaluation Criteria
In evaluating Websites, several criteria can be used:
• Color
• Color and general layout have a definite psychological
impact on site visitors.
• A specific used on the site must be evaluated from the
perspective of culture, age, gender, and class
difference.
• Shape
• Shape is an extremely powerful (but overlooked) tool. It
can motivate consumer, inspire visitors, and make a visit
to the Website enjoyable.
• A circle, triangle, or a rectangle could convey different
feels to the audience as in the case of color.

Website Evaluation


• Type (Font)
• Type should be appropriate and used carefully.
Decorative fonts are best used for titles and display; they
should not be used for body type.
• Times New Roman (organization & intelligence, elegant
and conservative), Sans Serif & Arial (warm & friendly).
• Content
• Websites should provide valuable, timely information-not
lots of text.
• Updated information, interactivity, fun, and freebies,
well-organized, edited, and timely original content set in
an attractive and consistent format are traits of great
Websites.
Website Evaluation


• Services Offered
• What unique services does the site offer? It is not enough
for a company to simply list its services. It must provide
some detail on those services, along with contact
information in case of questions or a need to follow up.
• Primary Focus & Ancillaries
• Every Website should have the primary focus which
indicates the core business of the company.
• In addition, the website should also detail & provide links
to the ancillaries.
• The companies should give appropriate weightage to
core business planning and ancillaries planning.

Website Evaluation


• Professionalism
• This criterion considers how professional the site looks to a
visitor. It includes neatness, spelling, and grammar.
• Speed
• The critical question here is how long it takes the visitor to
click from one page to the next. A page that takes more
that 8 seconds to come up rates low. Always remember
the 7 second rule.
• Consistency
• This criterion looks at how similar Webpages are in layout
and design. It the site doesn’t have a theme, it will not
attract many visitors.

Website Evaluation


• Personalization
• Sites that are high on personalization keep track of
repeat visitors and their preferences, and respond to
them as though the interface is one-to-one.
• Security
• Sites with firewalls and digital certificates, as well as SSL
for information and transaction processing, would rate
high on the security scale.
• Scalability
• The criterion is related to how easily a site can be
updated with the development of business in coming
future.

Website Evaluation


Website:
Site Usability


What Makes a Website Usable?
•The term usability has been used with different meanings in
different situations.
•Usability refers to a set of independent quality attributes like
performance, satisfaction, ease of navigation, and learnability.
•For End Users
• For the end users, it means an application that allows the
user to perform the expected tasks more efficiently.
•For Managers
• It is a major decision factor for selecting a product.
•For a Software Developer
• Usability is viewed in terms of the integral attributes of a
system that affect user performance and productivity.

Site Usability


How well the Website address the following criteria, scales
Websites as usable or not.
•Is the Site engaging?
• That is, do visitors enjoy the experience? Do they feel in
control of the site tour?
•Is the Site Efficient?
• Is response time fast enough to keep visitors on the site?
Does the site make it easy for visitors to understand what
each page is about?
•Is the site supportive?
• When visitors make a mistake, is it easy for them to undo
their mistake? Does it offer help, advice or directions when
necessary?

Site Usability


•Is the Site consistent and reliable?
• Does the site respond consistently throughout a visitor’s
tour?
•Give visitors what they’re looking for.
• Give visitors a reason to visit. The site should be designed
to reflect what visitors want to buy rather than what the
merchant wants to sell.
•Identify the business.
• The content should show the business in a unique light.
•Easy to navigate
• A visitor who gets lost in the middle of the site will most
likely leave out of frustration. Remember the 7 second rule.

Site Usability


•Focus on content before graphics
• Content should be useful and usable. Good content
should guide, educate, sell, and make a hit with the visitor.
• Graphics and animation are no substitute for content.
They should be used carefully.
•Make your text scan-able.
• According to Nielsen’s research, 79% of Web users scan
rather than read. Only 21% read. To improve scan-ability,
consider bold text, large type, highlighted text, captions,
graphics, content lists, and bulleted list.
•Be careful about flashy content
• Present information without boasting and minimize any
subjective claims. People do not appreciate being misled.

Site Usability


•Encourage visitor feedback
• The Website should incorporate an opportunity for visitors
to offer praise, criticism, suggestions, and the like, make it
easy for them to reach you via the Web, by phone, fax, or
e-mail.
•Test, test, and test again
• Remember the two level of testing:
• First, see if the Website is technically right,
• Then, see if the site is having acceptance with the
audience.
• Simply analyzing site logs (records of how many hits each
page got, the paths users took through the site, and so on)
is not a reliable way to test the Website. The acceptance
of the site with the audience should be tested.
Site Usability


Website:
Site Testing


Reliability Testing:
•The internet’s increasing role as a medium for commerce has
placed new emphasis on reliability. Reliability is related to
usability, the core of which is availability.
•The three components to Web availability:
• System availability,
• Network availability,
• Application availability.
•To ensure Website reliability and usability, the following points
are worth noting:
• Provide system backup,
• Install a disk-mirroring feature,
• Ensure that the system hardware is fault-tolerant.

Site Usability


Reliability Testing:
•To ensure Website reliability and usability, the following points
are worth noting:
• Provide system backup,
• Install a disk-mirroring feature,
• Ensure that the system hardware is fault-tolerant,
• Be sure applications are self contained,
• Allocate appropriate hard disk and database space,
• Test the compatibility factor, hardware with hardware,
hardware with software, software with software, and
network compatibility with software, hardware and
database.

Site Usability


User Testing:
•Once the design process is complete, user testing is crucial
before loading the site on the Internet.
•The users for this testing are the people who have no pre-
conceived notion about the site.
•If majority of the users testing the site finds it difficult to locate a
certain feature, there is a good chance that the wider audience
will have the same difficulty.
•The designer should present the site with a description and an
explanation of the layout before placing the site in front of the
users and let them review it. Their reactions can give the
designers a good sense of the underlying patterns in their
responses.

Site Usability


Web Testing:
•The Web testing is generally done by automated tools which
look into the interactions among:
• HTML pages,
• TCP/IP communications,
• Internet Connections,
• Firewalls,
• Application that run in Web pages (Java script, plug-in
application, and the like),
• Application that run on the server side like database
interfaces and logging applications.
•Other considerations might include
• Expected load on the server and performance ratio.

Site Usability


Web Testing:
• Downtime of the server.
• The kinds of security (firewalls, encryptions, passwords, etc)
required.
• The connection speeds the target audience will be using
and whether they are within the organization or Internet-
wide.

Site Usability


Web Server Testing:
•It is not just the links, images, color, or format that can affect
the performance of a Website.
•Major performance indicators are the speed of the servers and
the network connection.
•Review the status of ISP’s Web server, the bandwidth used, the
Websites it hosts, and the nature of the Web traffic the ISP
handles.
•If hosting the Website independently, revisit the server software
to ensure that it is tuned for speed.
•Test the site against the competition to see how well it fares in
terms of speed and overall performance.

Site Usability


Internet Marketing:
Objectives


Objectives of Internet Marketing:
•The Internet is transforming every organization and forcing the
corporations to rethink strategies and directions.
•Internet offers a high degree of interaction and affords
consumers unprecedented benefits, from convenience to
bargain price.
•Marketing is “the art of possible.” It is the process of planning
and implementing the conception, pricing, advertising, and
distribution of foods and services to meet the demands of the
market for which the product or service is intended. When it
comes to reaching people online, the opportunities are virtually
unlimited.
•It is important to know that online marketing is about business,
not just technology.

In a Nutshell


Objectives of Internet Marketing:
•The main objectives of Internet Marketing are:
• Leveraging an existing investment.
• Starting simple and growing fast.
• To understand what to offer as a product or service.
• Anticipating where the company is going with the
product.
• Understanding what is unique about the product.
• Attracting and promoting a repeat customer base,
• Keeping the lines of communication with the customer or
supplier open and operational around the clock.
• To know the customers, its habits, behaviors, and
potential.
• To make sure that the business is fast and reasonable.
In a Nutshell


Internet Marketing:
The Pros & Cons


The Pros of Online Shopping:
The following factors make online shopping attractive:
•Choice
• Customers is general enjoy having choices before they
decide whether to buy or what price they are willing to pa
for a product.
•Vast Selection
• Online, products can be reviewed and compared at no
cost in time or funds. This feature makes online shopping
much more efficient than having to visit store after store.
•Quick comparison
• Consumers can quickly compare products in terms of
price, quality, shipping terms, and so on before making a
final choice.

The Pros & Cons


The Pros of Online Shopping:
The following factors make online shopping attractive:
•Availability
• Website is an online store. In the Internet market, it can
stay open 24x7. Customers are spread all over the world
and can make purchases as and when they want.
•Economical
• Saves a lot of capital. Emailing the subscription base is
cheaper as compared to sending a letter through the
physical mail.
•Instant Updation
• Updating the subscribers through e-mail may allow them
to start shopping as soon as they check the mail.

The Pros & Cons


The Cons of Online Shopping:
Along with good features, comes a few drawbacks.
•Lack of in-store help
• Products that require in-store help continue to be bought
at traditional stores.
• Buying personal items like perfumes or clothing, buying
large items like furniture, usable tools where demo is
required, and the like.
•Real shopping Experience
• Websites do not provide a consumer experience that feels
like real shopping.
• Also the tools available on the Website to help the user
reach the right product are inflexible. Consumers continue
to search on their own, which is not the goal.

The Pros & Cons


•Cost
• Internet marketing is not free organizations have to spend
of the infrastructure, designing of Website and maintaining
it, distribution costs and time. The overhead and hidden
costs have to be considered while providing the products
and services.
•Lack of Updation
• Timely updating the Website is important at all costs. It is
easy to leave content unattended to, thereby resulting in
obsolete, dump and lame Websites which may harm the
image of business rather that giving the clear picture.

The Pros & Cons


•Security and Confidentiality
• The users should know that you provide complete security.
The audience is mainly hesitant when it comes to online
purchases. The fraudulent and other malpractices often
deter customers from conducting online businesses.
•Competition
• There is a lot of competition in the online market. Unless
business provide what customers need within a few clicks,
they will be far gone.

The Pros & Cons


Internet Business:
What’s the Justification


Justifying an Internet Business (e-presence)
The first question a merchant should ask before plunging into
Internet marketing is “Is the Internet right for my business?” To
answer this, organization should have a clear picture of the
business and an understanding of the forces that might threaten
its survival.
Several reasons might be given for going on the Internet:
•Establish Presence
• The platform could be used to provide information like
company info, history, location, shopping hours and so on.
• The information could also disclose the products for sale,
today’s specials, methods of payment, special discounts
or offers, and the like.



•Establish Presence
• Make customer know that you are available to serve them
efficiently.
• Many brick-mortar stores use online marketing to attract
new customers.
• Eg: banks make a form available to pre-qualify for a loan
could be rated as entry-level Internet Marketing.
•Heighten Public Awareness
• Anyone who access a company’s Website and learns
about the company, and what it offers is a potential
customer. In fact, any online individual at a specific time,
could be rated as a potential customer.
• No alternative marketing medium can do the same jot this
quickly or this well.


•Share Time-Sensitive Information
• When it comes to timing and availability of information,
the Web has no equal.
• Eg: quarterly earnings statement, merger news, or the
name of the grand prize winner, news, interviews, audio
releases, reservation status on the travel sites and the like.
•Answer Important Questions
• Every day organizations spend time and money trying to
address customer queries, most of which are repeat
questions. Among the roles of the Website is to compile
FAQs that customers can access.
• This will remove another time consuming task from the
company’s staff.



•Stay in Touch with Field Personnel
• The sales force occasionally needs information from the
home office about a product, a procedure, or a special
situation.
• Using the Web to provide such information is the most
efficient and effective way to do business from afar.
•Market at the International Level
• With a Web page, a company can reach international
customers just as easily and quickly as it can each the
customer next door.
• In fact, many companies have learned that before going
on the Web, they must have a plan in place to handle the
surge of orders.



•Serve the Local Market
• Local or global, Web access is everything. A local
restaurant, a movie theater, or an auto repair shop can
benefit from web marketing. No matter where the
business is locate, the customer should be able to access
it on the Web.
•Market Specialized Products
• Specialized products or services, from baseball caps to
flying lessons, are ideal for Internet Marketing.
• With millions of surfers on the Web, the smallest interest
group could turn out to be a sizable number of customers
for the product if it is made available in the desired
configuration.



Internet Business:
Marketing Techniques


Internet Marketing Techniques:
The Internet allows for a continuum of marketing techniques
ranging from strictly passive to aggressive.
•Pull Marketing
• Passive Internet Marketing is called Pull Marketing,
because it required the user to pull the information from
the Site.
• The user must actively seek out the site by taking the
initiative requesting specific information from the Website.
• Currently, most people access Website content by pulling.
Each time the user clicks a link, the browser sends a
request to the Web server asking for a specific page. The
browser downloads the page and displays it on the user’s
screen.



Internet Marketing Techniques:
The Internet allows for a continuum of marketing techniques
ranging from strictly passive to aggressive.
•Push Marketing
• In aggressive Internet Marketing, the Website seeks out
potential customers.
• This is called push technology, because the Website
“pushes” the information at the consumers, irrespective of
their interest.
• The companies follow the given push marketing strategies
to reach the customers:
Spamming  Banner Advertisements

 Cookies  Permission Marketing

 Popup  Viral Marketing



Internet Business:
The E-Cycle of Internet Marketing


The Life Cycle:
Like any business venture, Internet Marketing follows a life cycle
that begins with planning, followed by the four P’s:
•Product
•Pricing
•Place (distribution or delivery), and
•Promotion (customer personalization is unique to marketing on
the Internet)

E-Cycle of Internet Marketing


The Business Plan:
A business plan is a written document that identifies the business
goals of an organization and how the organization will achieve
them.
It is as simple as laying out the things the organization want to do
and matching them against other products on the market, the
competition, the constraints, and the cash flow requirements.
In virtually every case where an online business failed, it was
either because of poor planning or poor management.
A business plan is critical for an Internet Business.
A committee of experienced staff usually looks at the entire life
cycle of the business, does simulations to see how well a Website
operates using sophisticated software, and matches all the
alternatives against set goals before generating the master plan.



The Business Plan:
The content of a business plan varies with the type and size of
the business, but generally includes the following elements:
•Mission
• What is the business trying to achieve? Missions are related
to the vision of the owners, which is also considered.
•Product
• What the organization is selling? What makes it unique?
•Competition
• Who are the competitors? How well established are they?
Analyze their Websites and review the unique features
they offer customers.



The Business Plan:
•Target Audience
• Are prospective customers likely to use the Internet at
work or at home? Do they use e-mail, newsgroups or
social networking platform?
•Marketing
• How do the organization plan to reach the customers?
What advertising media do you plan to use?
•Sales plan
• What sales methods (telemarketing, agents) do the
organization plan to employ? What about distribution
channels, pricing, and fulfillment processes?



The Business Plan:
•Operations
• What equipment, location, and size of facility is the
organization planning to start with? What about the size
and quality of staff that will support the operation? Details
of the suppliers, what are customer support and services?
And the like.
•Technology
• What hardware/software and other technology is needed
by the organization? Information about ISPs and their
reliability and their charges.



The Product:
•When it comes to product, the emphasis is on viability, quality,
reliability, dependability, and integrity.
•Quality products means fewer headaches in the way of returns,
repairs, or customer complaints.
•This is especially important in Internet Marketing, where
customers look for reputed merchants with quality products at
competitive prices.
•Product may be physical goods or services, but in both the
cases, identifying the unique features of either type is critical in
Internet Marketing so that right segmentation of audience could
be done effectively.



Pricing:
•Once the products is identified, the next step is to decide how
much to charge.
•Web-based pricing strategies differ with the merchant, the
market, and the type of customer.
•The pricing is highly influence by:
• The investment in the technological infrastructure by the
company or merchant through which the online
transactions are committed.
• The overhead cost saving which other wise incur with the
physical store like wages & salaries of workers, the
investment in physical property, execution overheads like
electricity bills and the like could lead to discounts.
•The prices hence have to be fixed accordingly.



Place:
•Electronic commerce facilitates the exchange of information
between businesses and delivery companies to ensure prompt
delivery of physical goods.
•More and more companies align their fulfillment phase with
delivery companies (Federal, Gati, DHL) so that direct deliveries
are made to the customer from the supplier to the customer.
•Also, the Internet itself can be viewed as a delivery channel for
digital products.
•Internet Merchants deliver online news services and stock
trading services electronically.
•This is a new distribution channel for sellers of digital products
that is cheap, fast, and effective. But its availability & use, due to
technical & social inequality, in all parts of the Globe is always
questionable.


Promotion:
•Internet Marketing is about promoting a product to get the
attention of prospective customers.
•E-Marketing conceptualize AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action).
•E-Promotion also involves e-presence, which is done in 3 ways:
• Promoting yourself on your Website – this involves having
relative domain name, giving company info, awards &
achievements, feedback support, contest & games,
discounts and the like.
• Promoting yourself on the Internet – by using facilities like
e-mails, newsgroups, advertising on other sites, and mobile
marketing.
• Promoting yourself on the Web – optimizing site for search
engines, spider compatibility and ShopBot compatibility.



Internet Business:
Integrating E-Commerce & Business
Activities


Integration of E-Com & Business Activities – What it does?
•The integration may enhance the value chain activities which
in turn helps business to be more effective. The value chain
activities are of two categories:
• Primary Activities – this comprise of Inbound Logistics,
Operations, Outbound Logistics, Marketing and Sales, and
Service.
• Support Activities – may include corporate infrastructure,
human resource, and technology development.
•The integration may certainly see the enhancement in the
services like
• Customer Relationship Management,
• Supply Chain Management, and
• Enterprise Resource Planning.

E-Com & Business Activities


Supply Chain Management:
•Supply chain refers to the flow of materials, information,
payments, and services from raw material suppliers, through
factories and warehouses, to the final consumer. It includes tasks
such as purchasing, payment flow, materials handling,
production planning & control, logistics & warehousing, inventory
control, and distribution.
•Supply Chain Management means coordinating, scheduling
and controlling procurement, production, inventories and
deliveries of products and services to customers.
•Supply Chain Management includes all the steps you do
everyday in your administration, operations, logistics, and
information processing from your customers to suppliers.”



•Supply chain Flows are of three kind:
• Materials Flow – flow of all physical products, new
materials, and supplies that flow along the chain.
• Information flow - relates to all data flow associated with
demand, shipments, orders, returns and schedules.
• Financial flow - include all transfers of money, payments,
credit card information, payment schedules, e-payments
and credit-related data.
•Supply chain involves three segments;
• Upstream (Inbound) - where sourcing or procurement from
external suppliers occur.
• Internal (Operations) - where packaging, assembly, or
manufacturing take place.
• Downstream (Outbound) - where distribution or dispersal
takes place, frequently to external distributors.


•Supply chain Problems:
• Demand forecasts are the major source of uncertainties.
This may include competition, prices, weather conditions,
technological developments, and customer confidence.
• Delivery time uncertainties – Machine failures, road
conditions, shipments.
• Production delays – due to quality failures, plant failures.



Supply Chain Management – benefits of using e-medium:
•Integrated, automatic system-to-system interaction with all
trading partners.
•The ability to integrate those interactions seamlessly with your
in-house applications and processes to provide true end-to-end
visibility and control.
•Accommodation of the individual nuances of each partner's
mode of interaction.
•A high-quality and reliable means of exchanging messages
over the Internet, which provides business-level guarantees of
delivery and integrity.
•Intelligent management of those interactions, allowing control
and ability to change them dynamically.
•The ability to adapt to change, by quickly and easily locating
new services or partners, learning their specific capabilities, and
forming a rapid "electronic bond" with them.


Supply Chain Management – benefits of using e-medium:
•Tangible Benefits
• Inventory reduction, Productivity improvement, Order
management improvement, Financial-close cycle
improvements, IT cost reduction, Procurement cost
reduction, Revenue/profit increases, Maintenance
reduction, On-time delivery improvement.

•Intangible Benefits
• Information visibility, New/improved processes, Customer
responsiveness, Standardization, Flexibility, Globalization,
Business performance, Reduction in duplication of entries,
controls and reconciliation are enhanced, rapid
assimilation of data into the organization.


3. Web Presence: E-Strategies and Tactics

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