If you have decided to take your business online, there are two things that you will need to take into consideration before launching the new site.First, we need to think about the privacy policy that will protect our company and provide customers with trust in our site. As we know, online business is based on trust and customers deserve to know what our plan to do with the data that we've collect. Second, we'll need to make sure that our online transactions are secure. SSL (secure socket layer) encryption protects ours customer's sensitive information, including credit card and personal infrmation during online transaction.
There are 2 big component for setting up online business which are Website and Management issue..Each of this component will consists of several issues..
There are 12 main reasons for companies to establish a website:
1. Technology To Compete - autoresponders, accept online payments,deliver products over the internet.
2. Niche markets abound
3. Lifting the profile - small business can have the appearance&credibility of a large corporation
4. Low Cost
5. Open 24/7
6. Reaching A Global Audience
7. Customer Feedback MadeEasy
8. Frequently Asked Questions
9. Test Marketing New Products
10. Use of Time Sensitive Promotions
11. Interactivity-Automatic product updates, web site content&image changing, live video & streaming.
12. Serving The Local Area-a quick &easy way to access info about products& services from home
To be able to establish a website, there a basic requirements that need to be fulfilled by management:
1. Domain name & Hosting
Creating a domain is very crucial, as the domain name have to be easily remember and have to be a reflection of the company itself. This will have an effect for people to easily remember the our website name. Hosting will be another part that also essential because without hosting, the website wont be able to online.
2. Collecting data for design and start to build the website
The company have to collect all material that will be put into the website such as text, picture/photos, or sound..For text, we need to convert it into HTML while for picture/photos, we have to convert it into JPEG or GIF to be able to readable for internet explorer users.
3.Promotion
Creating a sophiscated website with a wonderful design will be useless if its not supported by a promotion. There are several ways that can be done to do promotion such as through banner, buzz marketing, media promotion(magazine, newspaper, TV, radio,etc), brochure,etc.
4. Result Analysis
As time goes by, companies need to review wheather the website have contribute a value added to the company or not..It will be such as a waste, if the establishment of website does not contribute a value added for company..
After deciding the technical, company needs to deal with the management issues such as:
- Architecture of the website
Defining the purposes of our website is vital to avoid "mission creep" and thus keep costs under control. The following are typical objectives for a website:
- Brochure - showing what you do:goods and services
- Commerce - selling whay you do
- keeping the customer happy, encouraging return visits
- Decision support - helping the prospect customers decide what to buy
- Product support - increasing effectiveness&reduce cost of warehouse&services
- Extranet - ring fenced area for agents, partners,etc to transact business or run virtual office
- Intranet - remote working on centrally held files or updating timesheets of staff working away
- Reference - provision of usually non commercial data like technical specification, statistics
2. Budget
The budget has to cover at least :
- Planning-setting out requirements and perhaps a specifications
- Design or visuals-sample pages to show the sytle maybe leading to changes in livery for web use
- Implementation-including databases, support software, integrating with existing system
- Testing-both functional &cross platform compatibility ex: PC,MAC, Internet Explorer
- Launch-deployment of component parts,website configuration, marketing, search engine
- Operational Costs- hosting,marketing,CRM,secure certificate
- Website content management-in house, out of house
Frequently thought is only given to the design element, but most serious website also require databases and perhaps integration with an existing sales order processing system. Some calculation has to be done on the likely ROI for commercial website to keep the expenditure appropriate.However there are minimum costs below which we can't expect a reasonable results. As ever, its balance.
3. E-commerce
There are specific issues with commerce that can cause problems. Some of the issues are:
- Shopping systems-product management, price list,basket,special offers
- Payment handling-credit card,cheque,credit transfer
- Credit card transaction
- Secure certificates
- Drop shipping-shipping directly from wholeseller
- Integration with your existing sales order processing system
- Serial number management(for software sales)
- Term & conditions,copyright,privacy policies andsecuring personal information
4. Legal
Legislation is starting to catch up with internet trading and it depends on each countries
5. Design
Website design has a lot of constraints, notably the shape, size,resolution and color capabilities of the viewing system. The following lists indicates most of the major design considerations:
- Target Market- what viewing facilities are they likely to have
- Base Layout- is there an existing corporate livery to follow
- Content- how ften does it changed?How it will be managed?
- Database- do you have corporate data or database support to remember visitor detail
- Multimedia- is it apropriate?
- Accesbility- what's appropriate to your market and legal oblugations
- Interactivity- this will require database to remember the visitor details
- Search/drill down facilities
- Security
- Newsletter
- Forum
6. Marketing
There are several consideration to able to attract customers log in to our website, such as:
- website traffics
- keywords/meta tags
- offline promotion
- company livery should incorporate the website and email address
7. Operational website
Once a website is up and running, there will be costs involved in promoting and maintaining it. Out of date websites are a turn off for visitors and therefore counterproductive. Keeping the content fresh may turn into something into magazine production where there is a need for continous input. This requires the content management to be someone's responsibility on a weekly, monthly, Quarterly basis as appropriate. Self managed website frequently suffer from poor copywriting,spelling and grammar thus leading to lower credibility and business confidence.
In conclusion,
a website is just one of the tools for companies to support the business to keep running. Also to make more competitive for company in the industry..Establishing a website is not a guarantee for a company to be success.. what the management need to do is to keep focus of vision, mission also the goal of the company..Using a website is just one of so many ways to keep our company differentiate in order to attract customers..By doing the stages mentioned above, all companies can go online..no matter the size of the company, small or big company can go online..
But keep in mind that establishing a website is NOT a GUARANTEE for company to success..
so people, i guess u're ready to go online :)
References:
- http://www.comauth.co.nz/the-seo-guys-blog/website-business-risk-management.html
- http://www.small-business-consultants.net/Downloads/web_marketing/Start%20E-Business.pdf
- http://www.eworkingwomen.com/experts/starting.html
- http://www.caz.ltd.uk/bd/wi.asp
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