ECommerce – A Plan
September 3rd, 2010Planning an ecommerce website is like constructing a house – structure and price range need to be agreed earlier than the decoration.
AN AGREED REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATION MUST BE DRAWN UP AS THE FIRST STAGE BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE IS DONE – ANY OTHER APPROACH WILL ONLY LEAD TO CONFUSION AND WORSE.
As soon as an AGREED REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATION has been agreed then options must be evaluated and costed in opposition to that specification are:
- Mission management
– {Hardware}
– Internet design and software
– Web site advertising
– Undertaking administration:
All elements of the venture have to be managed. Determine who’s going to do it and correctly plan the necessities, activities, outcomes, milestones and timings.
{Hardware}:
Your decisions here are a managed service or your own server. The security and catastrophe restoration aspect that’s achieved by internet hosting with a major supplier is very important. Solely go with your personal server if you have the experience and facilities.
Design and Software program:
Site design
Develop web site templates and check them with actual people. They should be straightforward to make use of and navigate. Do not let “design” drive the site; let ease of use and sales drive the “design”. Suppose how the client thinks.
Software program
At the least 5 solutions need to be considered.
- Updating
– Shopping cart
– Discussion board
– E mail
– Statistics
Updating
There are 2 real looking routes here. Either an internet or an offline, PC based content administration system (CMS). The web CMS might be either an Open Source CMS (Open Supply means any application that has been made accessible, usually free, to developers to view and modify freely. Examples of Open Supply functions are MySQL and PHP) or commercial.
There are execs and cons to each routes. An online system is on the market to anybody with relevant safety clearance anywhere any time. A PC based mostly system is, clearly, limited to the PCs operating the licenses. An example of a PC primarily based system is Macromedia Contribute which integrates with Dreamweaver. There are an entire range of on-line Commercial and Open Source choices akin to SuiteWise™, Drupal, Joomla, and Web site Baker etc. Nevertheless, even that is complicated by the truth that among the purchasing cart solutions also comprise CMS that could be sufficient for many corporations’ requirements.
Procuring cart and CRM
There are also 2 practical routes for the procuring cart – Open Source or commercial.
There are glorious Open Supply buying carts comparable to OSCommerce and Zen, but in addition glorious commercial options equivalent to Actinic and Buyer Focus Quick Order Portal (which comes with an entire CMS).
There are other factors to contemplate with the purchasing cart:
- Does it have its own or does it simply integrate along with your exiting stock management systems?
- Does it integrate easily with accounting methods (e.g. Sage, QuickBooks)?
- Does it have or combine easily with Customer Relationship Administration (CRM) techniques that could be proposed in future?
Discussion board
Many CMS have good integrated boards but if they do not our advice could be to use a superb Open Supply bundle similar to PunBB or phpBB. They’re free, strong and easy to integrate and customise into any site.
Most CMS, buying carts and boards have e mail solutions. Nonetheless, some solutions are very basic. If the chosen purchasing cart answer that finest meets the ecommerce and other requirements doesn’t have an effective integrated e-mail answer and if the identical be true of the CMS and forum options then stand alone Open Source purposes comparable to PHPlist are one various resolution and the opposite is an internet solution similar to Constant Contact or many others.
Statistics
That is arguably crucial part of the package. Should you have no idea how visitors to your website and within the store are behaving, what turns them on and what turns them off then it is far, far tougher to enhance sales and site profitability. Business applications equivalent to WebTrends and ClickTracks must be evaluated for greatest fit.
SITE MARKETING
There are four major areas to contemplate here.
- Offline marketing – e.g. in-store. What works most affordably to drive visitors and orders through the online from non-net activities.
- Site optimisation – how to ensure technical construction, copy, content material, back-links and a variety of different components are initially and remain optimised so that as many high search engine placements on related searches are obtained.
- Pay per click and different online advertising and marketing – the best way to get traffic from promoting against key phrases and phrases used in search engines like google and yahoo and from adverts on other sites.
- Electronic mail – the right way to develop the e-mail list and use it to grow worthwhile sales.
In summary:
- Handle the mission
– Assume how the customer thinks
– Get glorious software program to make discovering product and worth easy
– Make phrases clear and cost simple
– Guarantee you’re in stock and and have achievable supply timescales
– Be sure to have a superb CRM system and clear communications – mail, telephone, emai
– Market the positioning appropriately
– Know what’s going on – use your stats to check, track and check out
Price ………… effectively how long is a pice of string, however you might be up and running for a lot less than the price of new premises!!!
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