How To Plan A Company's eBusiness

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

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

 A couple of years ago, it was a norm for business to collect all brochures, ads, news and other marketing materials and just drop it onto a web designer. However, experience shows that you, the business manager knows your 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 can 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 a list of primary and secondary objectives

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

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

STEP 2. DEFINE TARGET MARKETS

You can define your target markets and for every target market you can determine:

target market needs
target market wants
target market expectations

Your main target market may be your potential clients. 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. A company investor/shareholder would require secure access to a different portion of company data.

STEP 3. DEFINE PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

It is important to specify the 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 the physical store. This would be the case if you 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 be ready to move on to the implementation phase. For any 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 an extensive list of applications with the latest advances in online technology. You have the choice of:

running your eBusiness system from your own office or joining the MyOffice24x7 grid network and becoming part of the MyOffice24x7 community;

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