I am going to explain why and how I am going to plan an e-commerce strategy.
What is an e-commerce strategy? an e-commerce strategy encapsulates all the decisions which need to be made when setting up an e-commerce site. As it is documented, it fixes the ideas, which is especially useful if several people are involved, it can also be given to any external agencies, if they being used to create any part, so they can clearly see what is needed.
Planning an e-commerce strategy
Structure of site
Customer interface
The customer interface is the first point of contact the user will have with the online business. If visitors are not able to use it easily, it is very likely they will shop elsewhere, for customers to buy products from e-commerce sites, they must register by entering their personal details). This usually involved giving full name, date of birth, address and sometimes financial details such as credit card numbers, ready to be used if the customer makes a purchase
Structure
It is important to consider the structure of the website and of each page within it. at all times customer considerations should come first, making sure they will enjoy their experience of using the site, find it easy to navigate and use and hopefully make purchases, perhaps also returning again to buy more products and advertising your site by word of mouth to their family and friends.
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Style
An e-commerce site is an extension of a business, no matter whether it tades in a traditional store or purely online. Most businesses will have a logo and a colour scheme, possible a standard design or specialised font, a customer should be able to look at an e-commerce site and recognise it as being part of the business as a whole. This can install confidence in the customer if they can trust the business, they can trust its e-commerce site.
Image
E-commerce site designers must pay careful attention to their company’s image, or brand reputation. With the emergence of a vocal community of bloggers, tweeter, and other social media users, it is very easy for one bad customer experience to go viral and be seen around the world.
Many companies have keyword alerts set up doe any mention of their brand online, so that the PR department is aware of a potential loss of reputation. And can act to resolve it, before the situation goes critical.
But protecting the company image can also be handled badly and the news media is full of stories of company employees getting into trouble for insulting customers via an official Facebook page of twitter feed
Hosting
When setting up an e-commerce site, there are two issues of hosting which need to be decided - Who will host it and which ISP to use.
Who will host?
If the site is to be hosted in-house, the business has to make sure its staff has the skills required design a professional-looking, fully functioning website. This may mean employing another member of staff, or even several, depending on the size of the site and the desired functionality. Keeping it in-house should result in lower costs, but businesses can fall into the trap of giving responsibility to employees who lack the necessary design or technical skills, resulting in amateurish websites that do not install confidence in customers.
Subcontracting means the business will pay another company to create the website, It depends on the deal as to how much is done by the subcontractor – it could be just the design, then the site is handed over to the company to maintain. Sometimes the subcontractor has full control long term. Although the letter option can be expensive and there can be communication issues between business and subcontractor – for example over design elements, with each having a different idea of how something should look, it is likely to result in a more professional website with more reliable functionality than using in-house resources.
A decision also has to be made as to the location of the web server. Will it be secure and