Task 1:
A. How to make online business expansion
1. How the product or service that the business offers will be sustainable in an online environment?
Any online business could be sustainable in case it has three concepts such as:
(A) The vast majority of people should need it and agree to pay money for the product (goods and/or services); in fact, the line of products should be differentiated from the affordable to the luxury goods and/or services;
(B) The business should be available online with the appropriate social media channels of digital media networking, which would allow the business owner to analyze the changes in demand and control the offer for the customers;
(C) There should be corresponding channels of customer services and support, which is available 24 / 7, 365; in other words, the online store should be easily attainable with as many payment options as possible as to please the most challenging customers.
2. The current online competition for the business product or service, including positive and negative aspects.
Positive: TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation has strong points over the competitors with the (1) leadership role in the trading as well as the (2) improved customer case. In fact, they have the (3) advantages technologies developed over other competing companies.
Negative: There is a (1) decline in the EBITDATA as well as the (lower returns on investment). At the same time, TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation has a (2) low trading volumes and (3) stiff competition. Please, see the table below for more details:
Table 1.
3. Online marketing strategies directed at your target audience (Mexican Investors).
(A) Split the offers into different website by categories, where one offer will be addressed at a time for the target customer base;
(B) There should be added a subscription to the news and events in the company;
(C) Today is the world of mass media, therefore, for every product, there should be added a video presentation with all the audio, graphics and text information in order to address the specifics of the perceptions of people.
4. The ways that to use social media tools to expand the business web presence.
(A) The social media tools such as YouTube should be used in order to address the video presentation of the line of products with the subsequent links to the main website, where the offer would be made.
(B) Social media should be used to promote the free services of the company by means to attract more people to use the free services and hence to find out about the paid offers.
Task 2:
A. Develop a proposal for an online business expansion in which you do the following:
1. The process of facilitation on the customer payment using e-commerce solutions.
The most important factor that defines the business expansion is derived from the availability of payment option online. It should be done in the way to provide as many options as possible by means to cover all the status positions of people.
2. Search engine optimization strategies to improve the findability of the business online.
(A) Create a separate blog for the company's customers in order to find out the desires of the existing as well as potential customers as well as to be able to communicate with them directly;
(B) Write articles on the blog to promote the possibility to involve people with the company;
(C) Offer a partner program in order to allow the existing customers offer the products to the potential customers while having the opportunity to earn money from each order made through the partnership, that is 25% / 50% / 75 % payment.
3. How to make the website accessible to a diverse customer base, making it internationally friendly, including the business climate, language, culture, and infrastructure requirements?
(A) The idea is to create separate websites that will address the business climate, language, culture, and infrastructure of the particular country.
(B) In case there is a need to go international, there should be created at least online representatives of the business in any affiliate country.
(C) There should be a lot of free public speaking towards the value of the goods and/or services that are offered by the company.
4. How to implement the customer relationship management software on the website?
There are many different customer-relationship management software already available on the Internet, the idea is to conduct a research on the particular aspects of business that are considered of major importance and use the already created solutions for the business as if it is the outsourcing campaign.
Task 3:
A. The sitemap for the website proposed for the online expansion, which shows the structure of the website and necessary pages.
Main page
About
Blog
Testimonials
FREE
Projects
Services
Store
Partnership
Contacts
B. The design mock-up of three website pages based on the proposed online business expansion strategy.
C. Discuss the scope for your projected web development and maintenance, including the following:
Components of the website such as pages, functionality, applications, and other necessary elements specific to this business.
Main / Should have the links to all the features of the website;
About / Should clearly state the reasons of creating the website and address the value for the target audience;
Blog / Should take the function of communication with the existing as well as potential customers; need to evaluate the demand and control the offer;
Testimonials / Important for the reason that it will show the potential clients what value it already brought to the existing customers;
FREE / Should offer a free product that everyone can try free of charge, but for the contact information;
Projects / Current projects that are helping people within the company and that are valuable to the customers, these should not necessarily be monetary projects but the interest focus;
Services / After the customer has retrieved the value of the free product, one will be eager to try the paid one, should have different pricing options from cheap to expensive ones;
Store / Should advertise the business products that the company can offer to its clients;
Partnership / In case there is an interest to advertise the goods and/or services of the company, the client could make money on the percentage of the clients' purchase referred to the company.
Contacts / The company should be easily located both online and locally.
Analysis of the development and maintenance costs associated with the website. Cost estimates should be presented for the development, design, and other activities identified in the scope of work.
Website: Wordpress engine (free) + template (free)
Domain and hosting: $3,95 / month / unlimited hosting + domain (free)
References
Score. (2012). e-Business Now. Retrieved from http://www.score.org/ebusiness-now.
