Business Marketing - Four Online Book Stores - Essay Example

Business Marketing Introduction The World Wide Web offers a marketer extended reach to s for disseminating information on products and also as the place at which the chosen products can be purchased. This paper evaluates four online book stores to provide information on what are the features that should be available on a web site that food products tailored to the needs of diabetic patients and others that would like to consume less sugar in the treats that they consume. Based on such an evaluation this paper will attempt to make recommendations on the manner in which expansion of the current activity into the Internet should take place. Evaluation The web sites chosen are the online book stores of firstandecond.com, amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, and oxfordbookstore.com. These web sites have been chosen as to provide a wider perspective of online stores, since it incorporates the pioneer and the leader of online book stores amazon.com, a large publishing house in Barnes and Noble, a medium online retailer in Oxford Books, and a small book reseller in firstandsecond.com. The diversification of product range in the website of Amazon.com is wide, so that the website no longer resembles an online book seller, but an online store that caters to books, entertainment products and a range of other products. In a similar manner there is product diversification with Barnes and Noble into entertainment products. On the other hand there is no product diversification with Oxford Books and firstandsecond.com. Due to the product diversification in with Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble, there is more clustering in the main page of the website, and so the design of the website Oxford Books or firstansdsecond.com for product display is more suitable for the web site to be developed. In both these sites the central section of the first page carries product promotion message and below that are clear images of the products on offer, with a peel in facility for more details on the products, which includes the price. This enables a customer to get more information on the range of products available before exercising a buy option. On the left are options that enable a customer to gain more insight into the company, its history and policies and the like. On the right side of the first page are promotion information like promotional offers on products, new arrivals and specific topics on which books are available. In all these web sites the option for multiple purchases exists and so there is a shopping cart to which the products chosen can be added and the list of items in the cart displayed with their costs and the total costs. The customer can remove products from the shopping cart in case of change of mind or in case the total cost exceeds the planned spending. The payments option in all these sites is through a variety of credit cards. In the smaller sites of Oxford Books and firstandsecond.com the credit card brands accepted are displayed as large icons on the right side, making it easy for the customer to identify whether the limited credit card brands are accepted. The popular brands of credit cards accepted in these sites. Since the payment is by virtual means security is an issue, which is addressed by these sites through the providing of their security policies, which a customer can peel in to and read for satisfaction. Recommendations The first recommendation is to use a web site design similar to the firstandsecond.com web site design. There are benefits that emerge from it. The web site is appropriate for the needs of the expansion of the current business into e-business and the costs can be kept down. The web site will offer all the product information facilities. Promotion messages like the benefits of low calories can be highlighted in the top middle of the web page and the range of products below these moving messages in the middle. Peel into facilities offered by clicking into the particular product could provide the web content of the ingredients and other details of the product including the price and packing. On the left will be the options of knowing more details of the company, its history and policies. On the right promotion offers can be displayed, with peel into options that allow for web content giving the details of the promotion offer. A promotion strategy that can be employed is to have an icon that provides the facility of recent evidence emerging from the benefits of a diet that contains low sugar, with a facility for updating this information. Another promotion strategy could be in the form of referrals through a referral icon, which would also allow customers to log their comments in a blog form. The software to enable all this is not expensive and companies like volusion that offer startup e-commerce software packages that grow with the expanded needs of the organization would be ideal (sell online). Payment collection is major issue in e-business. A Paypal merchant account would be suitable. It comes free and the costs involved are a small transaction fee and a percentage of the sale amount, which can be taken into account while pricing the product. The Paypal merchant account allows customers to make credit card payments. The software company can install the payment button on the website, wherein the customer can make payment and also verify payments. A suggestion here would be not to use the credit card payment option immediately, but wait for a while till customer confidence in the web site is built up. The reason for this is that customers have become very wary of providing credit card details to web sites that they are not familiar with. Another way would be to offer payment through credit cards as well as without credit cards, using the Paypal facilities (What’s the Cost of Starting An Online Business?). Sale of products should be restricted to only the United States of America, removing the possibility of difficulty in payment collection. Even Amazon.com follows such a restriction, where they do not allow sales into countries, like India, from where payment problems may arise. Security of customer information is an important issue in e-business and hence clear information must be made available in the web content on the security policy of the company, with a separate bold icon for customer to click into and relevant parts of the policy to remove any doubts that they may have. Literary References amazon.com Retrieved April 20, 2009, from Web Site: http://www.amazon.com/ BARNES & NOBLE. Retrieved April 20, 2009, from Web Site: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/ firstandsecond.com Retrieved April 20, 2009, from Web Site: http://www.firstandsecond.com/ OXFORD BOOKSTORE. Retrieved April 20, 2009, from Web Site: http://www.oxfordbookstore.com/dotcom/oxford/ sell online. Retrieved April 20, 2009, from, volusion Web Site: http://www.volusion.com/ What’s the Cost of Starting An Online Business? Retrieved April 20, 2009, from, ITS MY BUSINESS Web Site: http://www.itsmybizniz.com/whats-the-cost-of-starting-an-online-business/ Read More