We work extremely closely with our clients, becoming an adjunct to their business for such time as is required to fulfil their needs. By liaising so intensely with them we become aware of every facet of their business and are able to advise them across a wide spectrum of needs and requirements. The development and support we offer can be divided into the six stages detailed below:

STAGE 1 – Market Research & Competition study

Objectives

• Identify potential market.
• Identify market segment-geographic, age groups, economic groups.
• Identify marketing avenues for getting web traffic
• Identify competition, their history
• Evaluate competition strategy and their success
• Evaluate competition prices
• Evaluate competition website and operations technology, size and scale.
• Search engine research, key words research to identify customer interest.
• Intellectual property rights, Rules & Regulations & Copyrights.

STAGE 2 – Business process evaluation

Strategy

• Compete on price
• Compete on quality Targeted groups
• Change management
• Response to competition
• Customer support strategy
• Marketing strategy

Category and Product evaluation

• Product mix
• Product attributes
• Product pricing profit margins
• Discount strategies
• Product images and meta data sources

Operations evaluation

• Sales Lifecycle
• Order processing lifecycle
• Inventory management
• Staffing
• Outsourcing non-core operations

Accounting

• Integration with existing accounting packages

STAGE 3 – System design planning and organization

Decide on general website features based on

• Strategy
• Product complexity
• Operations
• Accounting

Decide on branding for the website based on

• Strategy
• Competition study and industry optimized models

Decide on optimized layout and presentation

Allocate Resources

• Time
• Finance

STAGE 4 – Execution

Implementation & Setup

Hosting

Payment Gateways & Processing

STAGE 5 – Marketing

Print media

Channel partners

Field agents

Work place agents

Online marketing

Search engine promotions

Ebay , Froogle, Amazon, Affiliate sites

STAGE 6 – Ongoing review and enhancements.

ECOMMERCE BUSINESS – THE QUESTIONS WHICH HAVE TO BE ASKED AND ANSWERED:

When the process of development is initiated, the following basic questions have to be answered:

• Which products do you plan to sell on the internet? Do the products require a variety of manufacturers and product categories?
• Have you clearly defined your targeted market using parameters such as age, business, region and socio-economic factors? If so, are you able to provide details?
• Who do you view as your closest competition, and which business would you most wish to emulate? What do you have which marks you out from your competition, and how will you go about highlighting this Unique Selling Point via your ecommerce website?
• Are there any particular discounts or other promotional offers which you would like to place upon your website?
• How would you like the search feature on your website to operate – as a simple keyword search or a more advanced version?
• Do you want to offer trade accounts? Would you go as far as to set up separate trade accounts with a differentiated tariff?
• Do you want to offer discounts for bulk buying of goods or incentives such as free delivery on orders above a certain price?
• Do you want different types of delivery methods i.e. standard delivery or express delivery, with different methods offered at different prices?
• Do you want to offer an online delivery tracking mechanism?
• What inventory control tools do you want to have in place? Options include having products featured on the website only when they’re in stock, or to have the quantity in stock gradually reduced on a sales-made basis and then removed as soon as this number reaches zero.
• What paperwork would you send out to accompany your deliveries – I.e. invoices, letters, bills etc, and would you want the system to automatically generate this material when an order is made?
• Do you want customers to be able to set up login accounts which display their previous order history?
• Do you require site statistics to be collected, such as the number of customers visiting etc?
• Do you want to be able to monitor a customer’s behaviour on the website, noting aspects such as which pages they visit, which objects they add to their basket and whether these products are all finally purchased or some are abandoned?
• Do you want to integrate your website with Google Adwords, so that you can track sales made via Google Adwords?
• Do you have an internet merchant account; do you have a preferred payment gateway?
• Do you require an email marketing feature that allows you to send emails to registered users, taking the form of newsletters, promotions, special offers etc?
• Do you want to provide gift vouchers or promotion/discount vouchers?