eStrategy

The Basics
If you are about to establish an online store then think carefully about what you are going to sell. If your business is physical goods then the secret is to sell things that are easier to find and buy on the Internet than in a shop. The other thing to remember is that the product or service must be attractive to online users. This is especially true if your are selling content or information via downloads or subscriptions.

Next consider your web site from a number of angles. You have to create good, interesting content relevant to your products and services. This is a major factor in achieving a high ranking in the search engines. However once customers start coming to your web site they have to find it worth the visit and be suitably impressed so that they visit again. Success on the internet is about repeat business and single product web sites will struggle to keep attracting new customers each and every month.

Then there are many legal issues to consider including consumer rights and copyright issues.

Last but not least you want your customers to buy things on your web site - you have to make it extremely easy for them to do this.


	e-Business Strategy Developing an e-business strategy may sound difficult but it involves deciding on WHAT your business is achieving now online and WHAT it should be achieving in the future. Then set objectives to determine WHEN you want to achieve these milestones. The final bit is HOW these objectives are to be met.


			Taking Stock A good way to starting this whole process is to carry out a SWOT analysis: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. The results can be presented in many forms. Most small businesses should be able to carry out this task with a minimum of external help. Investigate how you plan to collect payments from your customers and how much this is likely to cost the business for each and every transaction. Look at your minimum transaction value and the smallest multiple that you plan to sell via the web site.



		Infrastructure Any business needs a good infrastructure in place to service the expected increase in customer activity. If your business plans to ship a lot of physical goods then other factors such as back office systems and even office space may become more important. There are ways to out source many of these overheads to specialist companies who should work in partnership with you. Of course an online store or e-commerce development involves a web site. Apart of the shopping cart and payment processing system you may want to add other features such as a portal, guest books, bulletin boards, video , audio, games, autoresponders, RSS feeds and so on. All these additions make a web site more interesting for your customers.