How to Plan Company's eBusiness

With thousands of large businesses competing for visitors, how the small/medium business can be successful and get the results it is looking for?

Having a company website and properly doing marketing on the internet are different sides of the online game. So, company website shall be developed to meet business objectives with target market in mind.

 A couple of years ago it was a norm for large or small business to collect all brochures, ads, news and other marketing materials and drop it to a web designer. You, as small or medium business owner know target market better than the web developer. You know:
what your users want
what your buyers base their decisions on
what are your users' expectations

Step 1. DEFINE OBJECTIVES

You shall clearly define your online objectives by undertaking the following steps:

analyse all parts of your business from marketing and sales, through shop-front personnel, customer support, fulfilment and administration

generate list of primary and secondary objectives

plan elements of your online presence that relate back to every listed objective

The most common primary objectives for SME include advertising of product or service, selling of product or service, provision of customer service and product support, providing product or corporate information, establishing company brand awareness, providing customer access to own records.

STEP 2. DEFINE TARGET MARKETS

You shall define your target markets and for every target market you shall determine:
target market needs
target market wants
target market expectations

Your main target market may be your potential clients, but other target markets most definitely will revolve around existing customers and those elements that influence the buying decision for your potential customers, affiliates, partners, etc.

For example, when you look at potential customers and existing customers, you will find that their needs from your eBusiness site are completely different. Your products, your business practicies are probably not the priority for an existing customer, but a potential customer needs this information before making the first order. Company investor/shareholder would require a secured access to a different portion of company data.

STEP 3. DEFINE PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

It is important to define products and services that you want to promote online. Quite often the products and services that you offer in your physical store would not be the same. In most cases, fewer products and services are offered online than in phisical store. This would be the case if yout are doing test-marketing or online sales are not appropriate due to competitive pricing or shipping/delivery logistics.

People looking for products and services online are looking for convenience, and the setup that provides the greatest conevience would be the winner.

STEP 4. IMPLEMENT YOUR eBUSINESS SITE

Once you have clearly defined your online objectives, your target markets, and the products/services you want to promote and support online, you should ready to move on to the implementation phase. For small and medium business it is important that the eBusiness site setup is simple, easy to (self-)maintain and grow at the same pace as business grows.

MyOffice24x7 eBusiness suite has got it all and is always kept up-to-date with the latest advances in online technology. You have the choice of:

running your eBusiness system from own office or joining the MyOffice24x7 grid network

training internal staff to operate your eBusiness system or outsource some or all maintenance activities to MyOffice24x7 consultants that are located in your suburb