E-Commerce Considerations

E-Commerce: Strategy and Considerations A SWOT team analysis can be incredibly useful to help highlight the goals and motivations of a particular business. When it comes to the task of taking my small business online to develop an ecommerce site, the potential benefits are indeed staggering. However, the online marketplace is a formidable environment and it's still important to consider the obstacles present with the endeavor of going online.

Strengths: The strengths of taking my small clothing boutique online are primarily in the fact that the boutique already has a strong following. The customers of the boutique are already fiercely loyal. An online site allows us to offer our already loyal base of customers a more convenient way to purchase goods. The boutique appeals strictly to a niche audience and a very specific type of customer. For example, the bulk of our items are vintage with unique pieces from the Victorian era and the neo-punk era as well.

Opening ourselves up to an online base of potential customers means that we'll be more likely to encounter customers who are more firmly entrenched in our niche. Weaknesses: One of the primary weaknesses of this endeavor would revolve around the main fact that the online marketplace is already so crowded and so oversaturated. There are already twenty or so online boutiques which specialize in our exact niche and which would be our direct competitors.

This presents a clear weakness of our business as it is, because we simply don't have the same level of manpower to appropriately compete with them, nor do we have the same amount of money to devote to marketing and advertising that would allow us to gain greater consumer attention. Another weakness that would be present in the task of going online is that we would have to adapt our branding: as it stands now our branding isn't strong enough to compete in such a formidable environment.

Obstacles: One of the major obstacles of expanding to an online marketplace would revolve around the absolute necessity of expanding our product base. Right now, we would need to expand the sheer number of products that we offer so that we can lure customers over to our site. Another obstacle is that if we want to create and keep a customer base, we would need to figure out some sort of customer loyalty program.

There would need to be a rewards program in place to ensure that customers felt as though they had a vested interest in being loyal to our online store. Another means of keeping customers would be connected to the products that we would offer via our online store: we would need to sell the most hard-to-find, coolest and rarest products if we really wanted to aggressively expand our consumer base and compete with the bigger fish in the ecommerce sea.

Threats: One of the major threats to our success would be the limited quantity of online goods in general. There is a finite amount of product that we can sell. Another threat to our success largely revolves around the fact that our early days online will be rather precarious and riddled with threats. So many of our competitors could easily "stomp us out" with their massive advertising and marketing budgets. Some of our online competitors have social media departments dedicated exclusively to promoting the brand forward.

The early days of the company online, will need to be devoted solely to engaging the customers we already have and ensuring their interest. 2. International Issues It is true that as a result of the Internet, any online business is immediately international. Thus, when it comes to dealing with issues like trust, culture, language, government and infrastructure, one needs to have a precise plan in place to meet all these needs.

Trust is something that can only be built with the consumer base over time: this is via establishing an online reputation of quality products and reliable shipping. Culture is less of an issue because the business deals with a genre of counter-culture: the people who would be attracted to this online store and the products sold there, are largely ones who gravitate towards things which are alternative to their own culture or to the normalized culture that they're used to.

Language is an issue which will mostly be dealt with by having the text of the website translated into a range of common languages, such as French, Spanish, German, Japanese, and Chinese. Since the store sells clothing and accessories, it's highly visual and isn't quite so dependent on language and such related issues, one needn't worry about translation as much.

When it comes to government, it will be necessary to acquaint oneself with the laws of merchant selling online in each of the respective countries where one will be shipping items to. The most crucial aspect about infrastructure is that the shipping part of the business needs to be completely tight: this refers to shipping and production. Once an order is place online, it needs to be shipped immediately to the buyer.

"Annually, new and established online sellers will see dozens or even hundreds of packages that fail to arrive -- lost or damaged in the conveyor belts and trucks meant to carry them to customers. Be prepared to manage both the cost of lost items and the problem of disappointed customers" (Roggio, 2013). Thus, this is something that needs to be prepared for and that one needs to be aware of when launching an online business. 3.

Online Businesses and Regulations As a result of the fact that our business deals simply with clothing and accessories, and does not deal with things which are liquid, perishable, or which are highly regulated (like alcohol), we really only need the most basic understanding of the merchant/selling laws of a particular nation. We need to know what sort of tax, if any, is placed on our goods, and we need to be aware of any goods or materials that we're not allowed to use or ship.

As already stated, the bulk of our success depends on how good our shipping department is, and whether or not items can be shipped safely and quickly while replenishing our inventory. In the beginning, we will only ship to countries that have signed the Guidelines to International E-Commerce.

These guidelines: "set out principles for voluntary "codes of conduct" for businesses involved in electronic commerce; offer guidance to governments in evaluating their consumer protection laws regarding electronic commerce; and give consumers advice about what to expect and what to look for when shopping online" (ftc.gov). This will ensure that there's more of a common understanding between the nations that one is doing business with and the consumers there. This process should be free of worry and anxiety, as long as there is a commitment to fair business practices.

There's still a responsibility to respect privacy laws, prevent identity theft as a business owner, use consumer credit reports and other safe practices (sba.gov). 4. Law enforcement agencies have difficulty combating.