Website and Shopping Cart

I am the owner of a clothing store along the jersey shore boardwalk and decide to engage in e-commerce AFEISHA HERRY STRAYER UNIVERSITY MICHAEL HOWARD BUS107 11/26/2011 I am the owner of a clothing store along the jersey shore boardwalk and decide to engage in e-commerce I am the owner of a small clothing store along jersey shore and I am being offered 1000 for my domain name that I will use in the process of e-commerce. Firstly the domain name that I will be using must be pronounceable, brandable, makes sense and also be available, if my domain name is effective in helping the business to grow, I will not sell it. An effective domain name is not easy to compose and sometimes obtain, from my experience I know that a great domain name creates a good impression online and makes you influence people and eventually they will buy your products if you are selling something, all of this I would have taken into consideration before I created a domain name, from my point of view I would not sell an effective domain name if I know it will give my business a boost. Also I will look at the bigger picture I know that I can make a bigger profit if I keep my domain name than to sell it for 1000 which I might not even make a profit on. On the other hand it’s ok if someone has a good domain name and wishes to sell it I don’t see it as being unethical, it all comes down to a person’s decision on how effective and useful the name is to them and if they will benefit from which ever decision they make. The e-commerce software you will be using must provide a catalog display, shopping cart capabilities, and transaction processing. The convenience and usability for the customer are benefits of these functions. State how each of these functions could be beneficial to your business. Catalogs offer consumers a wide range of products of either generalized or specialized nature, the shopping cart acts as a mediator between payment processors and website as well as a janitor helping customers finds the amenities provided. A shopping cart that’s easy to navigate and flexible enough to cater for the personal needs of the customers, improves the site usability and makes online shopping a pleasant experience for the customers. In the absence of a shopping cart the customers wouldn’t have a place to store and manage multiple items and would not have to order separately. For a business the shopping cart software organizes the information for successful transactions and ensures that things run orderly and smoothly. It enables the employer to handle the customers more easily with shopping cart integration; it would really be hard for the business operators to manage their client if every person would have to order every time he chooses a product. Business owners are benefited due to a better functionality that comes with the majority of shopping cart systems that offer features such as back end marketing, wish list and inventory tracking. A good quality shopping cart offers rich functional capabilities to the e-commerce business such as a concise catalog management and a simplified business management by producing a wide array of reports to manage the finances better, monitor sales and provide improved customer service. A shopping cart removes any obstacles in the way of the online customers and the growth of an online business. Transaction processing is a type of computer processing that takes place in a computer user. Every business has to deal with some form of transactions, how a company decides to manage these transactions can be a important factor in the success. As a business grows its number of transactions usually grows as well . Transaction processing is a tool that can help growing business deal with their increasing number of transactions. The advent of online technology has made the international distribution of goods and information a quick and often simple process. The emergence of features like secure servers, one click shopping, and tracking of packages over the internet have helped make them feel more at ease with the process. Transaction processing offer a rapid processing for any business, reliability, standardization, controlled access, transaction processing qualifiers, atomicity consistency, isolation and durability. Transactions processing support routine day to day activities that occur in the normal course of business that help the company add value to its product and services, business expect transaction rocessing to accomplish a number of specific objectives process data generated by and about transactions, maintain a high degree of accuracy and integrity, produce timely documents and reports, increase labor efficiency, help provide increased service, help build and maintain customer loyalty and achieve competitive advantage. Creating an effective presence on the web using revenue the seller establishes a brand image, and then uses the strength of that image to sell through printed catalogues mailed to prospective buyers. Buyers place orders by mail or by calling a telephone number provided an effective site is one that create an attractive presence that meets the objectives of the business or organization by attracting visitors to the web site, making the site interesting enough that visitors stay and explore, convincing visitors to follow the sites links to obtain information creating an impression consistent with the organization is desired image, building a trusting relationship with visitors and encouraging visitors to return to the site. Business accomplishes all of their goals for their website in their current web presence. Having a site that is accessible and easy for people to use can improve your web presences. Even making sure that the site encourages visitors to trust and even develop feelings of loyalty towards the organization behind the web site. An effective site should give the visitor easy access to the organizations history, a statement of objective or mission statement, information about products or services, financial information and a way to communicate with the organization. Presentation is also important, but so is realizing that the web is an interactive medium. Web site usability is important for a company on the World Wide Web a company is web site is the only point of contact that a company has with anyone who is interested in it. Thus companies rely on their web presence in order to achieve their online goals, be they commercials or otherwise. A company sets its usability goals through a combination of user proofing. The company then needs to qualitatively and quantitatively specify these goals then prioritize them so as to determine its usability goals. According to Nielsen and loranger the three most important characteristics that distinguish a usable web site are simplicity, naturalness and ease of use. When good usability is implemented in conjunction with good web design characteristics, especially visual attractiveness, it results in a web site that positively affects users behavior and the trust that a user has in the company to whom the website belongs. This trust is also affected by the user’s perceived usability that is the perception that the user has about the usability of a website before he/she actually makes use of it. Researchers such as safavi have proven that website having a user friendly design and an easy to use interface increases user satisfaction. Research also shows that the importance of web site usability increases in relation to the competition that exists within the environment that website is operating in. I can find no better quote than jakob Nielsen’s famous phrase that on the web â€Å" the user experiences usability first and pays later† meaning that users are always at a click away from leaving a website they are in if they do not find it usable. To develop a web marketing strategy for my business I will first have considered who is my customer, what I have to offer and understand where I am and what I can do helps me to create an effective marketing strategy. In identifying the market segment that I will target I must do some research on my market , identifying who are my main competitors are, what are they doing online, what are their weaknesses and strength, do they offer a guarantee, is their product really good and do they build links constantly or not. Also who are my favorite customers, what forces them to buy one or another product, read reviews, forums, testimonials to find out as much as I can about my target market. After I have performed a through online market research it’s time to systematize the data I have. What are the main strengths and weaknesses of my competitors? My marketing strategy for the company will focus on the market segment of an entire family with young children, to reach that segment my business will feature clothing for every category of the family, fashionable and affordable is the key to attracting customers. To advertise my business on the web firstly I will create a very effective website with a very outstanding domain name, a creative and innovative web page, and informative information about my business. After creating an effective website how I display the products on the site has to do with how I would advertise, my advertising has to be interested , entertaining and capturing so that my target market would want to buy my product by just hearing about out. A good advertisement helps to gain customers. Reference Brewer, it, 2003 website usability of the www as practice. In first Latin American web congress la- web’03. Santiago, Chile, 2003 Belanger,F , et, al,2006,website success metrics, addressing the duality of goals. Communication of the acm. 4a Baker, Michael the Strategic Marketing Plan Audit 2008. ISBN 1902433998 * Laermer, Richard; Simmons, Mark, Punk Marketing, New York  : Harper Collins, 2007 ISBN 978-0-06-115110-1 (Review of the book by Marilyn Scrizzi, in Journal of Consumer Marketing 24(7), 2007) Schneider 2011/9th edition pg 140