Website Plan for Dairy Farm - Case Study Example

Website plan for dairy farm Website plan for dairy farm With the technological advancement in the current fast growing world, the question of a business website for a company and the online platform cannot be avoided. This report is aimed at highlighting and evaluating the need for a website in the dairy cows business. As observed globally, many businesses have gone online and have greatly increased their performance. The tourism industry for instance has widened its coverage and increased its efficiency in reaching out to many people. People are able to plan for their tourism activities from their areas of residence without having to travel. This is done through the online platform which includes websites. Other businesses like the sports industry have prospered as well through such platforms. In the current economy and business world, most of the advertising and marketing procedures are done online through websites. Besides being a cheaper marketing alternative, this method is also very efficient in that it reaches a wider number of people. Most of the people are actively logging in and staying on online platforms than on the normal media like TVs. This makes use of internet and websites an appropriate and efficient way of business marketing. This report focusses on the dairy cows business. This business is aimed at breeding the best dairy cattle for the purpose of production and selling milk. The dairy cows have already been purchased and are well taken care of. The cows are bred in a zero grazing architecture and feeds for the cows are purchased in large scale from wholesalers who also offer them at a given discount. The large scale purchase of feeds is a strategy to reduce production cost hence maximising profits. The market for the product (milk) is however a challenge to this business (Eckles, 2011). The marketing strategies currently used involve door to door campaigns, liaisons with daily products companies and advertising through posters which is a relatively expensive and less efficient method. The competitive factor for this business is that it is a large scale production hence much recognized by the general public and acquaintances than the other local milk producers. Distribution of dairy products from this business is done by agents who operate on motorbikes and some even use cars. Extra services to customers like door delivery makes this business a more preferred choice to its customers. It is for this reason that the company wants to increase its coverage by embracing the powerful online marketing and business operation platform (Pride, Hughes, & Kapoor, 2011). This dairy cows business has several goals laid down with their respective realistic timelines. The following is a list of the goals that the company intends to achieve: Capture and maintain 40% of the country’s dairy products market share. This is expected to be achieved in the next two quarters of the year through aggressive marketing and superb service delivery. Increase the current profit margin by more than 35% in the next quarter of the year. This would result due to an increase in number of customers which is projected to increase rapidly as soon as the business marketing goes online. Expose the business to the whole country through increase of distribution agents and utilisation of the efficient online platform for marketing via search engine optimization. Boost the perception of the public towards the company by adding extra services and increasing efficiency and reliability of the business. Increase the staff. Both the unskilled and skilled labour hence open more branches across the country for a wider coverage. Enable online booking and ordering of milk products from the company. This will reduce the hustle of the customers hence save their time and resources. This way, more customers will be impressed and attracted to the company. Now, more than ever, the world has become a global village. The world has become interconnected through the internet and is accessed by millions of users daily. It therefore forces one to join the digital band wagon and have an informative and appealing website. The following are the goals that the business’ website is expected to achieve: Publish information effortlessly Publishing information on the website is effortless. Given that it is a simple system to manage the webpages, all that has to be done is type up the information and put it on the website. It is also possible to update existing information with ease. Furthermore, unlike traditional publishing, there are no space limits on the web. The website can say as much or as little as the business is willing to say. Establish yourself as an expert People will perceive a business or a company as an expert in its field if it publishes exclusive information that they can read and benefit from. If a business has a website, it can publish information effortlessly considering that common knowledge to the business is not common knowledge to its prospects. A website shares knowledge by publishing articles, short reports, and reviews on its website. Reduce communication costs First of all, if business or a company has the right information on their website, they will reduce the number of inquiries for more information about their services. In addition, the company can have a webpage, where it answers questions that are asked frequently by its prospects. Furthermore, the business can invite its prospects to contact it through a contact form on its website as opposed to phone or fax. In all cases mentioned above, the business will generally reduce the communication and support costs dramatically. Boost the image of the business A business appears credible in the eyes of its prospects if it has a professional website. In other words, it boosts the overall image of the dairy cows business. More people will likely be willing to do business with the company if it has a good image (Elliot, 2008). Remember that having a bad or unprofessional website will damage the image of the business. Having no website is better than having a bad one. In the case of a satisfied client that wants to refer someone to the business, he/she needs to tell the referral about the business services and its benefits. This takes him/her some time and effort. If a website is present, then the client can simply ask the referral to visit the business’ website for more information. A website therefore makes it easy for the company’s clients to send referrals and this translates to getting more referrals than normal (Lulu.com, 2007). There is a wide target market for dairy milk and other products from dairy cows. The largest target is the people living in urban areas. Most of these people are unable to rear their own livestock since they live in urban areas and it is impractical to carry out such an activity in such an area. Most of these people are middle aged and stay with their families. This means that they require dairy products for their day to day survival. These people are also financially stable considering that most of the people that live in urban centres are in the working class category. Distribution of dairy products to such people can be efficient because they live in densely populated areas hence the total area of coverage is relatively small. Taking the business marketing to the online platform would therefore work efficiently especially on urban areas since a huge percentage of people who live there use smartphones as their mobile communicating devices. Smartphones are capable of accessing the internet which is one of the favourite activities for most people especially during their free time. Campaigns on the online platform is therefore likely to capture its required attention. Exposure to computers is also high in urban places. Computers have become almost like a basic need in the current technological world. Starting from workplaces to even homesteads, the number of computers is rapidly growing in this era. Most of these computers are connected to the internet hence access to the internet in rampant. The website for the dairy business also takes into account that actually most people use their mobile devices to access the internet. That website therefore has a mobile variant of itself where people using mobile devices can access the website efficiently and in compatibility mode. There are several competitors in this business. Most of them do not actually have a website, the few that have websites seem to have garbled data on their sites. For instance the Smith’s dairy website has a red colour as the header background. This is unattractive to the eye and un-business like because this colour usually indicates danger. The website also does not have an online platform for its clients to request or order their products at the comfort of their homes. The website however has a contact form which eases the direct communication between the company and its clients. This is a good feature that can also be embraced (smithdairy.com, 2014). The proposed website design has a good eye catching user interface. On the homepage, there is a slide show that displays relevant images to the company and what is offers. There is a well formatted text display still on the homepage that has a welcome message which is appealing to the clients. The theme colours for the entire website are light blue and white. These colours are known to have a very good aesthetic function. The website consists of only relevant pages to the customers. The pages are precise and straight to the point. Webpages on the website include: a page for prospective clients to view the products offered by the business, a page for clients to request or order for a product of their choice. This page allows clients to make their payments via PayPal or through any mobile phone money transfer platform upon which a receipt is generated automatically. A page for the frequently asked questions together with their answers, a page that allows any client to contact the company directly by sending it a message and finally a page that describes the company in detail and the company’s history. When a user visits the website, he/she will be able to access all the information about the company. If interested in the products offered, a client can hence request for a product of their choice together with its specifications. Payment is done through PayPal, mobile money transfer platforms or any credit card. After requesting, the client then checks out and waits for their request to be processed sand delivered to their address (provided during request). All this will require incorporation of several website development tools. The PayPal plug in will for instance be required to handle PayPal payments, mobile money transfer APIs and credit card APIs will as well be required to handle mobile payments and credit card payments respectively. The business has an IT department which will be responsible for process analysis. The IT department will be merged with the customer care department and given administrative rights. This will allow easy handling of queries sent to the company via e mail or the direct message contact form on the website. The website will be owned by the dairy cows company whose administrative executives will be giving information to the IT department for updating. This will be done on a weekly basis and once it is done, the same will be reflected on the company’s social media pages on a real time basis. However, the website will be maintained on a daily basis in order to respond to user requests efficiently. The IT department together with the customer care department will be responsible for the daily running and maintenance of the website. For the website to be useful to the company, people have to know about it. This calls for marketing of the website. The best way for marketing such a website is on the online platforms. This is efficient because the people who are online are the ones going to see and use the website. Advertisements will be done through social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Vimeo, You Tube, etc. advertisements can be placed on You Tube videos to capture viewers’ attention and pass the message across. Search engine optimization is also another way of advertising. This can be done by optimising the code of the website, using traffic generating sites like ad fly and cash fly and even using Google analytics to monitor traffic flow. Advertisements can also be done by printing and distributing pamphlets, T shirts and even wristbands in order to create awareness to the public. In conclusion, after weighing the benefits of a website and an online marketing platform, it is evident that such a website would be of great assistance for the business to reach out to more people, increase its profit margins and also achieve most of the company’s set goals. A website is an image of how the business looks like and operates. It is therefore an efficient requirement for a visionary company that aims at expanding beyond limits. References Eckles, C. H. (2011). Dairy Cattle and Milk Production. California: Macmillan. Elliot, T. (2008). Website 411: Business Survival in the Internet Economy. New Dehaven: Infinity. Lulu.com. (2007). EzyPzy Websites. Award branding Pty LTD. Pride, W., Hughes, R., & Kapoor, J. (2011). Foundations of Business . Cengage learning. smithdairy.com. (2014). Smiths Premium dairy Products. Retrieved from Smiths Dairy products: http://www.smithdairy.com/ Read More