Interactive and E-marketing - Coursework Example

HEADPHONES THE PROPOSAL The proposal is to launch an online company selling high quality headphones delivering all around the world. The company needs to provide the product through the websites that is interactive. E-business is a business which allows the customers to sell trade and barter over the Web. The company’s policy, operations, technology and ideology define its business model. B2C is a company based in Dubai.The products that are sold by this firm include headphones, woofers and speakers. Despite the fact that the company has been operating well, the trends and changes in the market has called for changes (Grove 2000). The fundamentals to the proposals success is the development of Four things: - 1 Attracting 200000 customers per month. 2 Converting 2000 of the 200000 of monthly visitors into paying customers. 3 Ensure high levels of satisfaction and loyalty 4 Securing financial funding enough to endorse a celebrity advertising as it is aimed at young people. These key proposals are highly dependent on securing a substantial budget justifying the proposal in commercial terms. Site design brief The design of the website will be done using the latest technologies that will enable it to advertise the services that are involved. Site architecture The site is organized in a way that there is a common entry point which is the home page. This makes it easy for the clients to identify the location they are in immediately they visit the web site. The three branches thatare the web services, online marketing and complain are the major services that the company offers. From the home page, the client can easily navigate to these sites with ease. In any of the said pages, one can encounter problems or may need to pay for that particular service; the third level therefore allows this ability of the web site (Baker, 1990). KEY COMPETITORS There two companies that sells the same product online and are our key competitors. These are Drebeats and Dennheiser. BUSINESS MODEL (STRATEGY) The company will adopt various strategies/models so that they are competitive in the market. This section will look at the various models that can be used. A business model is a method that is adopted by a business in order to sustain its activities. This is a model that will enable a business to get revenue. The Internet commerce is the most complex business that is hard to know the way money/revenue is made. 1 Merchant model / e-tailor model The site will provide visitors with arrange of headphones. Such a model is underpinned by generating a high level of traffic to the site and a high level of conversions. The types of merchant model can be in form of e-tailer which is an independent entity operating online or click and mortar which present a replica of traditional brick and mortar storefront (ler, & Swanson, 2004). 2 advertising model Revenue will be generated by selling space on site pages. Such space will be in demand by advertiser based on the content of the page which will be relevant information and article’s for the target market http://insight.think-train.com/?p=22 Informediary The information concerning customers and their way of consumption are gathered and analysed to formulate market target. The BCB business will enter into an agreement with firms that act as infomediaries so that the buyers of the headphones will be assisted by the firm to know more about the product. Such firms can be offering other services. For example emails or social site gives space where the business premises who want to advertise will put their advert banner. This ad network always gathers information about the customers that can be used by the sellers to maximize market strategy. Another strategy is incentive marketing where a system is put in place to track the customer loyalty and reward them for example giving them gift of point that can be redeemed after some time (Sullivan & Liu 2011). AFFILIATES The model filters the content of the web page and gives the customer information on specific task for example the buying opportunities are given to any individual that visit the page in form of incentives that goes to a particular firm that is an affiliate of that site. The three types of affiliate model that can be used are banner exchange where there is a shift of banner between the affiliate sites, pay-per-click where the affiliate get revenue from the merchant when there is a successful user click and revenue sharing where there is a commission on a successful click through (Granot, & Sosic,2005). WEB STRATEGY Web strategy will be based on organic search by obtaining a good ranking in search engines, PPC will be used to drive further traffic. Social media will add elements of link bait and develop the social interaction and hence the image of the site and allow for articles to be passed between visitors Business model will be revenue affiliate and content Internet tools- web1 and web2 With the increase in web applications in the world today there is still more to be expected. The current trends of leveraging of technology to bring about maximum outcome from these new technologies. There are new technologies that are being used to increase productivity in companies. What is more, the current wave of Web 2.0 technologies has great potential and companies are realigning their processes to tap from the Internet technology. There are many companies which have adopted the technologies which come with the use of the Internet (Granot, & Sosic, 2005). Web technologies have enabled B2C to create the customer value by tapping into the use of collective know thiscompany edge that is caught from the teams working in the various places around the globe. The use of the Internet has also enabled many companies to serve clients which have specific interests. Without the use of Internet, these companies could have been forced to market their services to wide geographical areas The Internet value proposition will be: Security, reputation and track record.AAd will be developed through the aesthetics of the site as well as issues of content and usability Social media integration -Among the trend that businesses are facing is including the marketing of the product in the social blogs such as Facebook and tweeter. The rise in use of social sites makes it very useful for companies to include their product in the social sites and also participating by having an account or a page where the customers can follow and drop comments about the service they get and even one can launch a complaint if he or she is not satisfied with the services. TARGET MARKET OPTIMIZATION TARGET MARKET OPTIMIZATION (INFORMATION ON COMPETITION) Statistics Summary for beatsbydre.com There are 11,172 sites with a better three-month global Alexa traffic rank than Beatsbydre.com. Roughly 29% of visits to it are bounces (one page view only). About 24% of visitors to it come from China, where it has attained a traffic rank of 5,409. Beatsbydre.coms visitors view an average of 3.7 unique pages per day. Compared with all internet users, the sites audience tends to be under the age of 25; they are also disproportionately childless, moderately educated, both high- and low-income African Americans and men browsing from school and home (Wentling & Thomas 2009).There are 11,172 sites with a better three-month global Alexa traffic rank than Beatsbydre.com. Roughly 29% of visits to it are bounces (one pageview only). About 24% of visitors to it come from... Statistics Summary for sennheiser.co.uk Sennheiser.co.uk is ranked #277,488 in the world according to the three-month Alexa traffic rankings, and it has attained a traffic rank of 14,728 among users in the UK, where we estimate that 69% of its audience is located. Approximately 43% of visits to the site are referred by search engines. The site has been online for more than fourteen years, and visitors to Sennheiser.co.uk view 3.9 unique pages each day on average (Wentling & Thomas 2009). Based on internet averages, sennheiser.co.uk is visited more frequently by males who are in the age range 18-24, have no children and are graduate school educated.Sennheiser.co.uk is ranked #277,488 in the world according to the three-month Alexa traffic rankings, and it has attained a traffic rank of 14,728 among users in the UK, where we estimate that 69%... Overall Objectives for the first 12 months following launch Critical success factors One of the key factors that will determine the success of an e-marketing is project management. This is the application of the skills and knowledge so that the coordination of the schedules and activity monitoring is achieved. The plan for project management involves the definition of the activities that will be performed, assigning of personnel to those activities, and promoting the acceptability of the process in the system. There is also the very important factor of business process reengineering. This is the redesigning of the business processes so that there is improvement in the critical and contemporary measures in performance and also reduction in cost, quality and service. Organization should be willing to change their businesses to suit the e-marketing so that customization is minimized. Since one of the main reasons for the implementation of the e-marketing system is to have a better business process in the company, there is therefore need to have a critical look at the way these two can be integrated for the improvement of the systems in the company. Change management is a very critical area where the employees and the management should be trained for the change that will be accepted in the company. One of the most common obstacles in the implementation of a new system is the resistance to change. This is destructive since it can bring conflicts between the actors. The conflict can also be time consuming as there will be a need to have time to resolve the conflict in the management and the employee perception. Management of risk is also important in the implementation of the internet marketing, and by extension, any information system that needs to be implemented. Risk is the probable chance of the project being deviated from the initial intention. Risk management is the taking of precautions so that the unexpected situations will not deviate the project from its original intentions. The importance of risk management is therefore to minimize the occurrence of unexpected occurrences that may interfere the smooth running and implementation of the system. Metrics There are metrics that will be used to measure the success of the implementation. There is a need to ensure that all parameters are met when undertaking the implementation. The company will be able to access the market from whole over the world at the convenience of the central office. The company will also be able to evaluate the market and track the way they operate by using the internet (Kershner 1990). One metric that will be used to measure the success of the project is the security of the whole process. The first thing that the organization should ensure is that it should come up with an intranet. The intranet will help to have secure transactions within the network. The first thing that should be done to ensure secure network not prone from attacks is having a firewall. The issue of the system being down will also be mitigated by the technical staff. The system should be monitored so that all bugs should be dealt with before damages can be met. There are good tools in the market that will help to monitor the networks. These tools send e-mails when there is a system error. The emails will serve to alert the support team to run to the safe maintenance of the system. Another metric that should be taken into consideration is that of availability of the items when a client requests. The supply chain process should be streamlined. The e-commerce site should be designed in such a way that the stock availability should be communicated to the client. The clients will be informed if there is enough of a stock in which they are interested. This will take care of the incidences where the stock is out of stock because of overbuying or under-estimation by the organization. This will ensure that the stock is updated and the client is always aware of the status of the stock they are interested in. Another metric to be looked into is the management of the online and offline stock of the product. This will need that the online and offline stock ordering processes be dealt with effectively. Navigation The design of the new system will be done in such a way that it is easy to get to the products that the clients want. Every page will have some strategic information that will be used to market the earphones and pieces. At its minimum, the pages will have the following pages for navigation. Home page About us Home page Services Buying Buying Stock inquiry Site design brief The design of the website is such that it is dynamic. This is because there is a lot of dynamic systems that have been put in place. There will be the use of development tools like Dreamweaver and Firefox. This is a critical stage in the web portal production as it is an important for long term product support as well as the image of the institution. The quality of the product would be determined to conform to standards set by other productions presently in application. To avoid crushes at the staff or student ends which would lead to poor credibility on the institutions side the testing would be extensive and comprehensive. The main goal of this stage is to enforce quality assurance. The testing part would be divided into the following steps. Unit Testing This would be a section of the whole system and would follow the coded modules. Its intention would be to ensure that the product really meets its objectives of design. A lot of issues would be fixed in this stage since it would be done by the coding team. The resultant product would then the pushed forward to a selected group of testers to conduct test cases on each module and ensure that they are all working as expected. Sanity Testing This would be simple check to ensure that all the modules of the system integrate well with each other. Its main goal would be to ensure that the development team has not made conflicting definitions of global variables and several functions. Stress Testing This is a basic process to ensure that the product undergoes a continuous testing process. The team would also use this test to ascertain the product behavior after continued use. This would of course unveil software bugs associated to memory leakages like in scenarios where memory has been allocated but not released. After some period of product use large amounts would be consumed by the product contrary to its expectation. Functional Testing This would be the last stage in the testing process as it will be conducted to ensure that the product has met all its intended functions and would be crucial before the product is deployed to the users. A group of persons from the team with good programming skills would be selected to conduct this test though no individual would test a module that he/she participated in writing it. The functional test plan would contain test cases run independently on the system and the guideline would be the specifications of the product prior to development. TRAFFIC BUILDER-E-MARKETING PLANS 1 Link bait using social media Posting an event that worth being news such as wall posts, tweet or a picture that is amusing. This can catch the user’s attention. This is the best way of convincing the customers. The post made should not necessarily be about the product. It can just be an amusing message and a hint of the company for example giving a URL that will lead the user to the company’s webpage (Clemons & Row 1993). The other one is having a fun page in Facebook or twitter that can be used by the customer to encourage other to look for the services of a particular company. HOW WILL U USE? The fact that the social media are independent not controlled by the company gives the customer the freedom of using the media in any way he or she likes (Sullivan & Liu 2011). 2 Pay per click- Pay –per-click and search engine optimization are the key advantages that are provided by Google analytics. The usability of the Google sites lures customers into spending more time in the web pages and hence can translate to the companies turn over. This makes it necessary for the company to ensure that the programmer that develops the website should have massive knowledge of software usability and flexibility (Chen, Zhang & Xu 2009).HOW WILL U SUE? When advertising was shifted to online, the kings in the offline advertising wanted to be the kings here also. They still wanted to use their old methods where they used the banners so much. With time, their old tricks were eradicated and right now we have very encouraged adverts on the Internet. Those who have not adopted technology fully still leave their advertising to people who are not competent. 2.1.1 New ways of advertising One problem that is still experience is the fact that most professionals have not learnt the ropes well. The Internet sensation that is experienced today is due to the improvements and the revolution where we are headed to digital technology. 2.1.2 Integration with affiliate marketing The paying of adverts when they are clicked is a poor way of advertising because there are some adverts which the company will meet their costs even if those adverts have not provided the company with any positive outcome. The idea of affiliate marketing is coming up with many companies as a new way of advertising on the Internet. Affiliate marketing is where a company pays for any referral only if a sale was made. The advertising system that is in place today is not viable for companies due to the fact that the system is not based on performance. When they get a sale, companies will then be in a position pay for the sale that was affected through the advert in the affiliate (Wallace, Pg 19). This trend is expected to go on until we have all the online system fully functional. This is a good shift for those anticipating trying this new way of advertising, away from the traditional advertising. 2.1.3 The entrance of private advertising Big companies are starting to find new ways where they will create their own audience. This will be bad for those who have been using affiliate marketing as their main source of income. This will be a good way for advertising though. It is expected that many companies will realize this new trend of advertising. 2.1.4 Sponsorship IBM has started using this form of advertising as a way of promoting their products and services. There is shifting paradigm as companies realize the need to reach their audience sing the latest technologies. Those looking for sponsorship opportunities find the market rife (National Research Council (U.S), Pg 169). They can offer an outstanding value. The next step in the sponsorship trend will be the creation of sponsorship marketplaces where established brands can identify sites, bands or individuals to sponsor. This has shown that new opportunities have been brought with Internet advertising and companies are realigning their processes to exploit these opportunities. These changes are bringing a great revolution on the Internet where many companies are shifting from traditional advertising to the internet use. As the Internet in being improved, it is expected that web advertising will be preferred by many companies. AD-words (Google, yahoo) 3 Links Links are provided in new communication channels called really simple syndication. This technology is used in syndication. They provide the capability of letting the users get updates in their email inbox. Web blogs have an orange button that asks the reader to subscribe to it. On subscribing, the reader will have the chance of getting updates and news from these sites. This feature will benefit the company especially for those users who rarely engage in social networking. Most users check their mail at least twice a day. This is a sure way of passing communication to our employees because if they subscribe to the RSS they will get daily updates without having to visit the blog site. 4 Search optimization Search optimization involves use of key words that user queries would most likely contain if they would be searching for a hotel. Correct referencing will be applied where necessary to support and information that might be quoted from copyrighted material or where authority of the argument is sought. Some search optimization strategies that most websites employ include ensuring that the content are relevant, using key words in a wise manner, and making some linking so that some companies refer to us by use of links that we exchange. A website is tagged in many websites that provide complementary services to us. These include businesses doing related business. These firms’ websites have links that will easily direct travelers to the mother company. MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY AND OBJECTIVES Search engine considerations and optimization strategies Site content will have to reflect the services and products offered by B2C. In order to capture the attention of potential customers, marketing strategy will be employed in the writing of the content. One example of such strategy is getting straight to the point while framing the content in an eye-catching manner without a compromising the correct and informative information offer. Limitation of content in each page to a manageable amount is also one consideration that will be taken into account. The right color for text, coupled with the correct font and text size will most surely give good results. In order to ensure that traffic is directed to the site easily, Search engine optimization will be considered. SEO involves use of key words that user queries would most likely contain if they would be searching for an earphone. Correct referencing will be applied where necessary to support and information that might be quoted from copyrighted material or where authority of the argument is sought. Some SEO strategies that our website employs include ensuring that the content are relevant, using key words in a wise manner, and making some linking so that some companies refer to us by use of links that we exchange. Our website is tagged in many websites that provide complementary services to us. These include cab services and TV services and firms that provide electronic music devices. Internet strategy One of the Internet strategies that B2C will have to put in place is advertising and selling items on the Internet. Although this strategy is not yet at par with companies, it is one of the fastest products that the company can adopt and is gaining popularity fast. There is also a suggestion to use Galileo GDS which permits the B2C to examine the online and offline total online selling. With this capability, B2C will now be able to sell more products effectively by use of Galileo’s wide range exposure to agent locations. With this, sales will be increased tremendously because sales agents and marketers of the company who have Galileo connectivity will be having new opportunities through the new content which is available directly on their desktops. In addition to this, the company has outsourced contact center services which will provide travel agents with general information like sales, inquiries, and assistance for customer service throughout the day in a very efficient manner. TRUST BUILDING ELEMENTS One of the things that the online sellers should put into consideration is that the sellers should really tell the shoppers who they really are. This is given the fact that the shoppers do a research before they buy anything online. It is characteristic for shoppers to look for information to authenticate the sellers before they trust them with their money. In the same breath, the sellers should make sure they give as much information about themselves as possible to erase any shades of doubt. This will help to eradicate the doubts that come with online shoppers. The sellers should be aware of the fact that anything they do online can be trailed electronically (Castaldo, 2007). Lying therefore does not help anyone here. The sellers should strive to make sure that they have references and testimonials of those they have provided services. Another thing that online sellers should do is that they should include guarantee ion the cases when they are selling products. This is common in offline shopping where people are guaranteed of their money back if they don’t like the products they have been given. Guarantee helps people increase their trust because they feel secured (Castaldo, 2007). This has gone even further where the sellers are willing to accept some proportions of the payments so that if the buyer accepts the product they will get the rest of the amount later. Another thing that should be done is that for the cases where services are provided, then there should be images of the providers and the video also. This will make the buyers know that they are not only dealing with a website. They are actually dealing with real people and not only websites. The sellers should be able to provide prospects which are stated clearly in the website so that the buyers are in a position to make informed decision of what they are selling. This will improve the services that are being sold in the online shop. On the part of the buyer, they are supposed to do a research before they start any online transaction. Any buyer should ensure that the company they want to buy from should have a physical address and also should have a contact line which is working. They should make sure that the telephone lines they give should be functional (Castaldo, 2007). This will help them to make precautionary calls to ensure that the person they claim to be should be real and not fictitious. Of the seller’s address is in the same country you are in, confirm with friends if these people really exist. The buyers should ask for friends if they have ever bought goods online. If so, ask then for the companies they dealt with. Compare the features of these companies with those that you have. Do they have the same or lacking some characteristics? What is lacking in yours that you should investigate? All these are very vital in this process. Another issue that should be considered by the buyers is to sure that they read between the lines of the testimonials that other buyers have written. There are some testimonials which are weird and not real. They talk about heaven which they cannot deliver. If possible, have a contact with the said testimonials. 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