E-Commerce Solutions (Ability to Pay Online) Vendor

E-Commerce Solutions (Ability to Pay Online)

Vendor selection

Vendor usefulness to company

Vendor usefulness to customer

Search Engine Optimization

Keywords

Content development

Back linking

SEO strategies, search engine ranking and stakeholder benefit

International Consideration

Market

International strategy

Language, culture and currency

Online Customer relationship management (CRM)

Outbound strategy

Connecting with customers and donors

Website analytics as a support to CRM function

CRM Software

DonorPerfect® Fundraising Software

Better customer experience through DonorPerfect®

The paper presents e-commerce solutions to manage online payments for the website of EEOC's youth program. It is recommended that PayPal Standard Account can be used by EEOC to offer online donation and payment service. PayPal offers discounted fees for the charity and non-profit organizations. The paper defines Search engine optimization (SEO) and three main SEO strategies that will be used for online marketing of the website. The recommended SEO strategies are keyword search, content development, and back linking. Methods of internationalizing the website are also discussed. These include internationalization tactics to capture relevant market, provide culture and language sensitive content, and support donations in multiple currencies. The paper suggests that EEOC youth program may use DonarPerfect® software to manage customer and stakeholder relationships.

1- Introduction

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) launched a youth program through their Youth@Work initiative. The previous paper presented a business case for the development of the website of EEOC youth program along with opening up of social media pages on different social networking websites. This paper presents e-commerce solutions and their implementation plan to ensure online business expansion of E.E.O.C. youth program (Excellence, Effective, Optimistic, Courageous Youth Program).

2- E-Commerce Solutions (Ability to Pay Online)

Kalakota and Robinson (2003) observe that e-commerce solutions allow two or more parties to execute transactions that interconnect through the web services. Any e-commerce solution should have a few basic qualities such as low cost to intermediary and end-users, customer satisfaction in using the service and operational efficiency that reduces the lead transaction time. EEOC is a non-profit venture, and their youth program targets the underprivileged and at-risk youth. It is appropriate to suggest cost effective e-commerce solutions. Donors and board members can lend their support to these initiatives.

2.1 Customer and company perspective

E-commerce solutions should support the end customer and the service provider when both parties engage in electronic transactions. This is specifically appropriate when service providers are delivering services in business-to-consumer (B2C) markets (Singh, 2002). In case of EEOC, we consider that any solution for their online payment and donations should be effective and provides search support, online response to queries regarding e-payments and security of transactions. The suggested solution should provide securitization of personal information of donors and students and also enhance the online shopping experience of visitors.

I- Vendor selection

The basic criterions for selecting e-payment vendor for EEOC are that the vendor should provide efficient and cost effective service to the end-users. The vendor should support interchange plus pricing for the end-user. The interchange plus pricing model allow the end-user of e-payment service to pay the fee that VISA or MasterCard levy on the end-user. On the company end, the vendor should support multiple methods to collect details of customer's VISA/MasterCard. The payment service provider (PSP) should allow the authorization of remote payments and the ability to redirect customers to vendor's website for better securitization of the transaction. We select PayPal as it is a preferred online PSP for numerous non-profit organizations.

II- Vendor usefulness to company

Web management team of EEOC may assess the usefulness of PayPal. More than 200,000 non-profit organizations trust PayPal to handle the electronic payment transaction on their behalf. PayPal offers discounted pricing of $0.30 per transaction for non-profits registered under 501(C) (3). PayPal will also allow EEOC's website to tap into the PayPal's account holder base to source new donors. EEOC website will have a PayPal "Donate" button on its website. There are options to register as PayPal Payments Standard, Express or Pro-account. Fees are applicable when EEOC will accept donations. EEOC will not be charged for monthly or set-up fees if contributors do not deposit donations in the beneficiary account (PayPal, n.d.).

III- Vendor usefulness to customer

An aspect of having PayPal as EEOC's PSP will be that 100% of donor's financial contribution will reach the beneficiary account. The donations are transferred within a few minutes to the checking account of the beneficiary organization. The customers do not require making an online account with PayPal to donate money. Ease of use and the level of securitization at PayPal's PSP platform is also another plus point. The motivation for customers to use EEOC youth program's online payment option may increase due to PayPal donation service.

3- Search Engine Optimization

Importance of SEO: "SEO is the process of setting up a website so that it ranks well for particular keywords within the organic search results of the major search engines, including Google, Yahoo, and MSN" (Jones, 2008; p. Xiv). Unlike the paid services to attract web traffic through search engines, SEO is an ethical and most effective free method to increase page ranking of websites. It is one of the most effective tools for increasing visibility of a company's website. The following strategies are used by the web management team of EEOC youth program to improve SEO of their website.

3.1 Keywords

Keywords are words that are most commonly typed into search engines when visitors retrieve information regarding the topic of interest. In any given, visitors search their information by typing some words commonly used for gathering information in that field. These are keywords, and this method of marketing is called the "keyword search" method. Search engines like Google have launched Google AdWords Keyword Tool for companies to use most searched words in their content. Some words attract high web traffic and these are words that websites try to incorporate into their content.

3.2 Content development

A recent article in Forbes Magazine describes that the website content is one of the three main pillars of SEO in 2014. The author, Jayson DeMers termed content development on websites as the most effective method for companies to attract and generate online traffic. Content development is the use and publication of original content on a company's website, blog or wiki to provide information regarding their services, products, or offers (DeMers, 2014). The powerful keywords and quality of the content attracts traffic to the website. In fact, some people call the content as being 'king of SEO' (YECH, 2012). It creates positive user experience and people who seek relevant, up-to-date and insightful information search for quality content on websites.

3.3 Back linking

Back linking is the presence of incoming links to a website. These are also called the inward links, inbound links and in-links. Back links have become an important source for Google and other search engines to rank the web pages. Search engines consider a link from page A to page B. As a vote by A for B. The website having links to quality websites of similar type are ranked high on the ranking system of web pages such as Google's Page Rank (YEC, 2012).

3.4 SEO strategies, search engine ranking and stakeholder benefit

The proposed strategies for SEO management of EEOC allow for an integrated management of online marketing of EEOC's online presence. The first strategy will be to develop quality content for EEOC's website that is interesting, relevant, and correct with regards to customer's needs. The use of keyword search will make the content qualitative resulting in a high page rank in Google or Yahoo search engine. By creating content that is relevant and interesting to real users of the website, other quality websites will also link back to EEOC's webpage. Lastly, the content will have relevant and currently in-use keywords. This will enable EEOC's webpage to rank high on Google's page rank. The content development team will ensure that the developed articles have enough back links to popular news and government websites. The presence of back-links will update visitors regarding relevant information about youth social support. The strategy will help customers in two ways. Firstly, they will have easy access to EEOC's youth program webpage as the page will have relevant and currently used keywords regarding youth support services. Secondly, after landing at EEOC's youth program page, they will have useful, up-to-date, and interesting information regarding the keywords that they initially typed. Another benefit will be that the customer will have enough back links to authentic websites. They can visit the back links as a follow-up to their visit at EEOC's webpage. From the company perspective, developing content for the website will require content developers to continue refreshing the content that has relevant keywords. The media management team will be providing customer value and earning higher page ranking in return of their continuous webpage management. The three strategies i.e. keyword search, quality content, and back linking of SEO when used in combination can create online marketing synergies for EEOC' youth program (Fleischner, 2011; p. 28).

4- International Consideration

Developing websites for an international audience requires companies to consider many aspects such as speed optimization, use of colors and language, cultural sensitivities and making the shopping cart (in case of EEOC it will be payment/donation making options) international friendly. The following elements shall be given due consideration.

4.1 Global friendly

Making websites global friendly requires that the site shall be optimized for marketing to an international audience. Country domain names can be used to improve familiarity of the website. The website should support translation and buyer costs minimization. Following issues will be addressed in case of EEOC.

4.2 Market

The management of EEOC youth program should identify the relevant markets that the non-profit concern plans to target. Although, EEOC's website will target international audience, the website will predominantly target the South American audience. This will allow the content development to target at-risk youth in South American states and South American countries.

4.3 International strategy

As part of internationalization strategy, EEOC youth program's website will have:

1. Different webpage for each of the Southern State of the U.S. And each country

2. Avoiding duplication of content

3. Target keywords for each country will be different

4. Obtaining web traffic demographics to re-align SEO strategy with visitor needs

4.4 Language, culture and currency

EEOC youth program's website will support translation of text into three main languages i.e. English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Majority of web traffic for EEOC's youth program web page will be from Southern States. The website will carry a dropdown menu having options for more than 10 languages. This will make the website user friendly for visitors from various country locations. To avoid cultural conflict for people accessing the EEOC youth program website from different countries, the use of images and text will be customized for each location through localization experts. The website will support donation collection through multiple currencies. Since EEOC youth program's donations will be collected online through PayPal, EEOC youth program do not need to worry about currency conversion service. PayPal will support the customers as it provides service of making payments in more than 24 currencies through any current PayPal account (PayPal Multiple Currencies, n.d.).

5- Online Customer relationship management (CRM)

5.1 Outbound strategy

Boeder (2002) argues that non-profit organizations will increasingly adapt to new technologies for managing their operations and relationship with customers, fundraisers, and donors. The non-profit firms can leverage upon the digital media technologies such as the knowledge base and one-on-one emails to contributors. Having an outbound CRM strategy is equally important for non-profit and for-profit organizations. This is because external competition from an increasing number of charity organizations and motivation to serve the target audience remains challenging for the non-profit organizations (Boeder, 2011). Outbound strategy for online CRM is also necessary since a vast number of potential and existing donors and customers (the millennial) spend their time online.

5.2 Connecting with customers and donors

Non-profit organizations like EEOC's youth program may assess the changing needs of their customers by using the digital media technologies. It is also imperative upon the non-profit sector to keep the non-essential costs as low as possible for maximum utilization of donor's contribution. Cost effective and time efficient online CRM solution in the form of social CRM, (Primault, 2012) are suggested for EEOC's youth program. Customer relationship management (CRM) for EEOC's youth program website will be conducted through outbound social CRM. EEOC will make use of web-based CRM applications via social media channels (Woodcock, Green & Starkey, 2011).