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Doing Business Online
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Many etailers look for professional help based on their ability to create the Web site design, which implies that the business owner already has a handle on many other facets of the online business. Is that the case for you? Consider the following graphic that depicts the differing stages of doing business online:
- Site Design –The equivalent of the layout of a physical retail store. The Clearance items are placed at the rear and new and exciting products have more prominence. The site design also determines your site organization and architecture.
- Marketing – Sales, discounts, coupons, gift cards, search engine rankings and keywords, customer reviews and rankings. How will you handle marketing?
- Merchandizing – Think about how you can increase sales per customer by offering bundles and thinking about product placement. Are there enticements that will get customers to buy more?
- Prices – Do your homework and know how you compete with other online sources. You may offer discounts for bulk sales or other incentives.
- Catalog – What is your plan for how you will maintain your product catalog. Will your products change often? Will there be new descriptions, specifications, images? How will you handle inventory shortages in your catalog?
- Inventory – You will need a way to track on-the-fly inventory for all your products. After the work involved in getting that online order, you really don’t want to lose business because you are out of stock!
- Customers – Managing customer relationships is mandatory. You will need to find a balance in strategies for generating repeat business, learning about customer likes/dislikes, storing personal and shipping information to enable one-click purchasing, offering enhancements to previous purchases, etc.
- Fulfillment – How will you handle the process of receiving and shipping orders? Can customers cancel their order? Can customers check on delivery times? Have a plan for how you will handle and improve upon this process over time.
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Web site and all contents © Copyright SRDC 2010, All rights reserved. |
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These materials were developed as part of the Southern Rural Development Center’s Nationall e-Commerce Extension Initiative. They are based upon work supported by the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, under Award No. 2005-45064-03212 Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the Southern Rural Development Center. |