Great Tips on Building an Internet Business

E-business - 2

Building an Internet Business

The E-business Life Cycle Phase I Business Planning Phase II Technology Infrastructure

Phase VI Maintenance/ Enhancement

Phase III Design

Phase V Fulfillment

Phase IV Marketing

Business Planning Phase  Planning means evaluating a company’s position

and its competition, setting a course for the years ahead and figuring out how to achieve the goals  Basic problem in going online: 

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What is the best way to launch the business on the internet?

How much company’s business should be on the internet When should the business go on the web?

 The Plan  Plan is a living document that will help you to track, monitor, and evaluate your progress  Planning e-business activities means:  Telling about e-business  Way to derive revenue  Monetary requirements  While making plan for e-business few things to be

considered:         

Employee’s familiarity with internet Customers of the product Type of product (long-term / short-term) Competitors Presentation of the product Managing the transaction Final shipping of the product Technological changes Handling of CRM

 Capacity Planning 

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Determining the bandwidth that will accommodate the traffic to and from website Objective is to retain the customer in each phase of buying

 Deciding on the type of Web Site   

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Marketing (online brochure not selling) Online sales and services Information Delivery (publishing and disseminating information) Customer Support (FAQs)

Technology Infrastructure Phase  Hardware 

Hardware specification required setting up e-business

 Software 

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Software that will help you manage your products, promotions, customers and orders.

Standard or customize

 Internet Service Provider 

Finding an ISP can be difficult task as evaluating their service on the cost parameter is a difficult task

 Security 

Document Security:  Entail

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integrity of the website and its information

Customer Security  Embedding

device in the visitor’s hard disk to track site

usage 

System Security  Preventing

from unauthorized access and tampering with e-commerce website

Selecting and registering the domain name  When it comes to choosing the domain name for our online

business, the name we select is important as it becomes our identity on the World Wide Web.  Therefore, the name should be easy to remember, pronounce, and spell.  When we select a new domain name, and want to register it, we will be required to provide an IP address for our site.  As we discussed in previous lectures, when a user types our website’s domain name in their browser, a Domain Name Server (DNS) associated with the client machine, automatically translates the website name into the corresponding IP address, which is needed to locate and access the appropriate Web page.

Domain name syntax  As we begin to think of the domain names for online business, we need

to consider the following in relation to the syntax: 

Only letters, numbers, and the hyphen (-) can be used in a domain name. Punctuation marks, such as a period, exclamation point, colon, and forward or backslash are not allowed. In addition, no spaces are allowed in the name.

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A domain name can be up to 26 characters long, which includes the main domain and the end of the name (such as .com, .edu, .org, .net)

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The domain name we choose must be unique, therefore it cannot already be used or registered by someone else.

The Design Phase  The focus is on designing a website to represent

your products or services in the best way  Planning content and navigation system should

consider:   

Limited vertical scrolling Providing links Creating useful organizational structure to help user locate information

Cont..  Customer service    

Your website is for your target audience,so make sure everything is focused on them.

Give users the information and services they want.

Create a “customer service” section in the website that encourages users to make enquiries.

Create a "frequently asked questions" section.

 Make it easy for people to do business with you   

Work out what customers’ online priorities are Let people configure your products and services Provide a search feature on your site

 Designing the Web Storefront  

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The intention of a Storefront is to make sales The website should load quickly and be simple to navigate Should be able to provide full information about your business Should have s feature for help desk

 Web Storefront should have four attribute

Customers should be able to find the product quickly  Site should have the mechanism to process the order and send it to fulfillment center for quick and secure packing and shipping  Should have mechanism to generate a summary of the order and produce a printable receipt  Mechanism for sending confirmation to the customer 

 Programs required to run the Web - Storefront 

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Database Server:  Provide secure access to shared data for client application Store administrator:  manages product information, site appearance, editing the product info., pricing changing and so on.

Catalog builder:  product information this feature should allow customers to search for product

Cont.. 

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Shopping Cart:  allow customers to gather item they are buying and hold them until actual purchasing function is executed Order –processing system:  totaling of order, calculating state and other taxes, shipping cost, method of payment and  finally generating the sales and customer report

The Marketing Phase 1.

Providing Good Site Service 

2.

Advertising    

2.

Maintaining accurate information and removing outdated information Announcing the launch of web site through search engines like yahoo Obtaining the link from other sites Purchasing the banner ad from other site Advertising via email

Know your customer 

When a person visits your site, a database can automatically put a small text file called cookies, onto visitor hard disk allowing company to gain information about the customer’s visits to the site

4.

Making the sales  

4.

Stock Control 

4.

Most difficult task in online selling (as people hold few product in their shopping cart but don’t buy them)

Collecting the cash  

4.

Web site must provide an easy to use purchasing function This means installing shopping cart and setting up automatic tax and shipping calculation software

Should accept a wide variety of credit card Before accepting any card, the online merchant needs an acquiring bank to handle the credit card processing

Delivering the good 

Speed of delivery

The Fulfillment Phase  Happen after sale  Activities to be conducted     

Packing up the merchandise Shipping it Answering question about the order Sending out the bill or verifying e-payment Following up to see if the customer is satisfied

The Maintenance and Enhancement phase  Before the website is built, it is important to consider how you want to

maintain the website.  There are a number of levels for maintenance of a website: 

outsourced: requests for change and the new contents are emailed to a web developer who makes the changes.

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in-house – manual: the business makes the changes itself by accessing the web server and changing the programming code ie the HTML.

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in-house – automated: the business makes the changes itself by using a maintenance tool.

 Maintaining your e-business systems includes: 

Website content maintenance

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Quality assurance

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Making improvements

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Technical maintenance

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Managing the maintenance system

For More Acknowlegement Visit: http://www.skylinecollege.com/digital-marketing-course