Planning, Implementing and Controlling of E-Business

E-Business plan for an E-Commerce company typically involves creating a document to use to obtain financing and start the business. Using the resources and tools provided from mentoring organizations such as SCORE.org, small E-Business owners can develop a comprehensive E-Business plan to get an online business up and running efficiently.

These are the way that planning E-Business

1. Executive Summary

Writing a business plan typically starts with downloading a template or developing a simple format. Alternatively, the Small Business Administration provides an online wizard to generate a plan for you. This tool guides a potential E-Business owner in describing his E-Business’ objectives and goals. Effective small business owners create an executive summary that clearly states how they intend to overcome problems commonly associated with online businesses, such as difficult-to-use websites and inefficient distribution systems. An executive summary usually includes a mission statement that explains the company’s primary purpose. It lists the names of company founders and their roles as well as office locations. It also provides graphs and charts to show projected growth plans.

2. Market Analysis

To conduct a market analysis for your E-Business, research online companies serving the industry in your area of expertise. For example, a budding E-Business owner might search the Internet to find out how many other companies supply the same type of products and services. This will give him an idea of how much competition is out there, and whether there is enough demand to support another company. After learning about other businesses, write a description of how you plan to differentiate your E-Business from others. This will help you build a compelling story that investors find attractive.

3. Company Description

The company description section of an E-Business plan describes how the business owner plans to organize and manage his company. It articulates the vision for marketing, selling and distributing the website’s products and services, and lists the features and benefits to customers. The plan should also describe research and development activities the founders have conducted so far, as well as activities planned for the future.

4. Financial

The financial section of an E-Business plan states the budget. If the business owner seeks funding, it lists the amount required and the projected return on investment for the online business. This section also identifies the costs associated with building the e-Business website, including desktops, laptops and mobile devices. It can list free or low-cost tools as well. For example, websites such as Homestead, Openxcell and Free Webstore provide functions to set up an online shop and accept payments for it, using applications like Google Checkout and PayPal.

5. Regulations

Writing an E-Business plan also involves researching the rules and regulations associated with conducting business online. The Small Business Administration Online Business Law website provides details on these laws. You should learn how to avoid legal and financial liabilities, how to conduct business securely, how to protect your privacy, and how to adhere to copyright and tax laws. Conducting business online usually means working in the global marketplace. An effective E-Business plan proposes a strategy for shipping products overseas and handling taxes, duties and international laws. It also describes a plan to collect sales taxes when necessary.

Framework for Successful Ecommerce Implementation and Controlling

1. Strategic business planning and roadmaps

Strategy is about making the right choices that will help reach the stated business objectives.

There should to be a clear cut vision, mission and objective about what will be achieved, in how much time, within what budget, identification of the right resources for and constraints in the face of execution of the strategy mentioned in the business plan, and what elements will be considered for roadmap.

Knowledge and deep understanding of the digital marketing tools and techniques that will help in reaching and acquiring customers is required. Your business must reach out to customers who are online across multiple dimensions and devices.

So, the assumptions considered in preparing the strategic business plan should be in alignment with the ecommerce industry’s norms and trends.

2. Technology selection/ website audit and analysis

In order to provide the maximum benefit to the end customer, your chosen ecommerce technology should be fully capable of being customizable, and be able to complement the business model, and adhere to the existing best practices in offline retail.

If you’re a retailer taking the first-time plunge into ecommerce, various functionalities on the e-commerce website should be carefully thought over based on the industry, audience being targeted, various customer segments who may be buying the offered products and services.

With respect to retailers who have implemented an ecommerce strategy and have not yet received the rewards of the complete capability of the ecommerce technologies, there needs be a complete assessment of how the website can perform better by examining the store front and customer flow, analysis of competing websites, identification and implementation of solutions based on the gap analysis carried out (‘as-is’ and ‘to-be’). It is equally important to measure and monitor the process that was made because of the implementation of the suggested changes.

3. Customer acquisition

Online or popular digital marketing encompasses multiple tools for reaching out to the new generation of customers, who are actively engaged in using multiple devices, through search engine optimization, search engine marketing (paid advertisement that includes both cost per click and cost per thousand impressions), social media marketing (that includes both cost per click and cost per thousand impressions), email campaigns, display advertisements using various ad networks, referral programs and re-targeting campaigns.

Going by the sales principles of AIDA (awareness, interest, desire and action), it’s important to note that the cost of customer acquisition will be very high for brands and retailers that are newly establishing their product offerings exclusively online.

However, for brands that are well established offline and are pursuing ecommerce strategy, the cost of customer acquisition is lesser compared to the new entrants.

4. Customer engagement

Customers these days are actively seeking to engage with brands to understand the core benefits and unique value proposition that the brand offers, discount and offers during special seasons, a robust support mechanism for queries/clarifications regarding the products displayed and interaction with customer support executives to know more about policies on returns and exchange, etc.

Engaging customers through various social media channels also instills superior trust in the minds of customers.

5. Customer retention

With the advent of sophisticated e-commerce technologies, new age retailers will be able to leverage an almost one-to-one customer experience and that’s the best a customer can really expect.

However, it should be noted that to fully leverage best-in-class technology, there needs to be a constant effort to look out for features and functionalities that will enhance the customer experience.

6. Optimization based on key metrics

Some of the key metrics to measure the health of an ecommerce venture are the total revenue generated, cost of customer acquisition, % of customers converted, and % of customers entering the website through various channels.

However, these metrics may vary significantly based on the business objectives and so every business needs a fully customized approach for defining the key metrics and further analysis.

Once these are defined and there are a substantial number of customers visiting the website, a deeper level of optimization is needed at 2 levels on the technology and the business front.

• Technology: This generally includes optimizing the page load speed, shopping cart, check-out and other web pages, a/b and multivariate testing, etc.
• Business: Optimization here includes analysis of the total revenues generated, total spends for running the e-commerce operations, optimizing the gross net margins, conversion rates from each of the various channels, customer loyalty and retention rates, rate of repeat purchase, frequency of repeat customers (across multiple dimensions), % of carts abandoned, etc.
• There are a lot of features and functionalities to helping online retailers improve these numbers. There is a lot of research evidence supporting the incorporation of features like reviews and ratings, and display of the right products either through up-selling or cross-selling.
• Based on the statistics, 47% of shoppers read product reviews prior to their online purchases and 63% are more likely to buy from websites with online reviews or ratings. Similarly, online companies that leverage a recommendation system can increase sales by 8-10%.

7. Business analysis and customer insights

The final step in the entire process is about fine-tuning and understanding the product categories that have performed well compared to other products displayed in the webstore. Assessing this is crucial since each of these categories and products within those categories occupy the prime real estate in the online world – the web store.

• It also should consist of understanding the customer segments, demographics, profitable customers, source of channels through which the profitable customers came to the web store, % of revenue each profitable customer contributes to and the marketing spends that has gone into acquiring these customers.
• These metrics are only a small representation of a larger list that can be optimized further. These metrics vary based on the business needs and require a customized approach for defining, monitoring and optimization.