E -Commerce Sites
E -Commerce Sites
Many organizations have integrated e -commerce in their activities and have benefited a lot from e-commerce. Matt and Grace have identified various needs that will be met by the e-commerce site. Matt and Grace only target the elderly population because the supermarket is located in a rural town. The town has a high population of elderly people and the number is still increasing. Matt and Grace need a website to reach many customers. The website will enable them reach diverse customers including students. There is a small private liberal arts college in the town that has 1500 students. Matt and Grace want to target the student population. Businesses like Sam’s Pub shop have targeted the students by offering products and services at night. However, Matt and Grace are unable to sell to the students as they close their supermarket early.
Though Matt and Grace target a huge population of elderly people they do not buy as much like the students., Therefore, the website will increase customer base, reach and sales. Matt and Grace will increase their sales and profit after targeting the students. Moreover, Matt and Grace want to remain competitive and stay in the market. Matt claims that they will be compelled to move out of the industry soon if they do not invest in the website. Businesses have embraced e commerce technology in order to remain competitive and survive in the market (Tassabehji, 2003).The project objective is to create a website for a small supermarket in order to increase customers and sales. Also, project focuses on developing a website for the supermarket to enable it compete with other businesses and survive (Plant, 2000).
Matt and Grace should do various things before talking to the consultant. Matt and Grace should determine whether their business needs a website or not. Determining whether the supermarket needs a website will help them in making ethical decisions. In addition, they should determine the cost and benefits of having a website. Matt and Grace should determine how much they will need to develop the website, integrate it and launch. The website might increase customers, increase sales and enable the supermarket compete in the industry. However, it might have a negative effect on the supermarket (Kennedy, 2005). Investing on the website might be costly and force the owners to incur huge losses instead of making profit. Therefore, Grace and Matt should be aware of the cost of the website before talking to the consultant. Also, they should examine other small businesses that have integrated e commerce in their activities and whether they have benefited. This will ensure they do not make wrong choices or decisions that might affect the business in the future (Kienan, 2000).
The consultant should tell Matt and Grace various things related to their business and e commerce. The consultant should analyze the businesses and evaluate its potential online and inform them. In addition, the consultant should inform Matt and Grace about the functional and technical requirements needed now and in the future. He should identify the SEO needs and inform them. Moreover, the consultant should inform the owners the best Ecommerce strategy and develop an information architecture and process flow (Costa, 2001). He should inform the owners where to get the best website and how to use it. Lastly, the consultant should tell them the benefits and costs associated with the site so that they can make proper choices (Al Qirim, 2004).
Reference
Al Qirim, N. (2004). Electronic commerce in small to medium sized enterprises. Idea Group Inc
Burgess, S. (2002). Managing information technology in small business. Idea Group Inc.
Bushry, M. (2005). E commerce. Firewall Media
Costa, E. (2001). Global e-commerce strategies for small business. MIT press
DevZone, D. (2011). Building ecommerce applications. O’Reilly Inc
Epstein, M.J. (2004). Implementing e commerce strategies. Greenwood publishing group
Jaworski, B.J., & Rayport, J.F. (2001). Ecommerce. McGraw-Hill
Kennedy, J. (2005). The small business owner’s manual. Career press
Kienan, B. (2000). Small business solution for e-commerce. Microsoft Press
Plant, R.T. (2000). E commerce. Prentice Hall Professional
Satterlee, B.C. (2001). E-commerce. IUniverse
Simmons, G., Simmons, G., & Thomas, B. (2009). E-commerce adoption and small businesses in the global market place. IGI global snippet
Tassabehji, R. (2003). Applying e commerce in business. Sage
Vrazalic, M.L. (2007). Ecommerce in regional small to medium size enterprises. Idea Group Inc
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