E-Commerce Strategy Truly Scrumptious - Assignment Example

Our company objective is to import a variety of traditional and non-traditional sweets, package them and distribute them to retailers across UK. While we have a good network of retailers who carry our goods, we have no way to reach directly to our consumers or to market directly to them. In this regard there is an opportunity for Truly Scrumptious for increased market penetration and to sell to individuals who would like to purchase our sweets at the whole sale prices or in greater quantity. While the costs in opening our own distribution outlet can run extremely high, including rental, shop interior and exterior, recruiting and training counter salespeople, a change in distribution routes and marketing - a much more efficient and technology enabled option is to invest in a company website.

Objectives and design of Website: The main object of the website is to communicate with our consumers, to tell them about the quality and variety of our products and to persuade them to purchase the sweets on at least a trial basis. Our long term plan will be to retain a loyal consumer base of individuals who become regular visitors to our website and purchase consistently. The e-commerce strategy will be a StoreFront model- providing all the traditional options of a physical store in a digital medium for the customer.

The secondary objectives will be to provide a forum for customer feedback and product information for interested retailers who wish to start a business relationship with us. In order to fulfill these objectives the website will need to have certain features: 1. An attention grabbing, yet focused and uncluttered design 2. Product categories will be neatly laid out and easy to access 3. Pricing, ingredients and nutrition information will be available with each product description 4. The product description should be catchy and attractive 5.

Shopping cart and online payment options, with easy save and change 6. Comments sections 7. Customer service communication options 8. Discounts, bundle pricing and other promotions 9. A separate page for interested vendors and retailers with contact and product information These features will be catered specifically towards a customer base of the middle and upper-middle class who are comfortable with online shopping and treat sweets like an indulgent pleasure. The whole website experience should be easy to navigate with eye catching visuals and elegant descriptions which will grab the reader’s attention and convenient use of shopping cart and payment options will allow impulse buying.

The E-retailing atmosphere is steadily getting crowded. New merchants are appearing every day and through continuous reviewing of operations and strategy websites are competing for the top spots of the industry. For our website to break through clutter, attract traffic and increase sales we need to have a clear, focused objective from the start. Technical and Practical steps The website building will involve three main steps namely 1) Content and designing 2) Hosting the website (external storage, capacity and bandwidth etc) 3) Marketing and promotion.

Afterwards our main priority will be maintenance, updating content and reviewing impact on sales. The actual sales, distribution and customer service will still be controlled by the respective departments with support from the IT department in integrating the physical aspects