Plan

Plan an e-commerce strategy (P6)

Promotion

Direct Marketing

Using direct marketing gets straight to your customers without the hassle of taking time to promote using other methods. Direct marketing such as email marketing can be used to promote Jhoots as people who subscribe to Jhoots will get the latest products on sale.

Banners and Pop-ups

Banners and pop-ups is a good method of promoting Jhoots as the more times a user sees the pop-up or banner then has a more of a chance to get their interest. This could help Jhoots get more customers and if people ever needed something they might remember to go back to Jhoots and see if they might want to buy something.

Search Engines

Gain customers through the web when people searching for pharmacy obviously are interested in products that they might want to buy at a pharmacy. Doing this, puts you at the top of the search or right hand side of the page if you were advertising on Google for example. This will gain customers and future customers to come who want to shop at Jhoots again because they were satisfied with their service.

Newsgroups & Forums

Since e-commerce is online-based, you tend to not have much human interaction with the customers that may not be in your local area. An alternate to human interaction, Jhoots can set up a forum for customers to visit and give feedback and you can see what they are interested in so you can adapt and make better products to sell.

Costs

Setup and Maintenance

Shopify is a leading e-commerce hosting service that provides you with lots of features to play around with. There are three different choices of membership. The most popular choice of membership is professional and you get all the useful and basic features that you need for Jhoots to start up. At a cost of $79 per month, you get the following features:

• 5GB File storage
• Unlimited products
• 24/7 Support
• Discount code engine
• Shopify Mobile
• 1% Transaction fee
• Gift cards
• Professional reports
• Abandoned cart recovery

These payments need to be paid in US dollars so Jhoots would need to be aware that they need to convert pounds into dollars in order to pay per month for the website.

Security

Shopify provides built in security at no additional cost, it includes a 128-bit SSL certificate to keep customers information secure and a certified Level 1 PCI DSS compliant, which means your shop can accept VISA, MasterCard, and other credit cards as payment.

Advertising

Google Ads has many different features that Jhoots can choose from. Google AdWords have three methods to choose from, CPC, CPM or CPA.

Most people starting out in AdWords use the basic CPC bidding strategy. CPC is known as cost-per-click. This bidding method is for businesses that want to drive traffic to your website. If Jhoots uses the CPC bidding strategy, the amount that Jhoots charged per click depends on the maximum cost-per-click bid that you set in your account. This represents the highest amount that you’re willing to pay for a click on your ad. If Jhoots decides to set a maximum CPC bid of £1 for their ads, then the most Jhoots will pay when a customer clicks their ad is £1. This does not mean Jhoots will pay £1 per click. It means that it is the maximum. So the cost per click ends up being below £1.

CPM is known as a cost-per-impressions. This bidding method is for businesses that want to increase awareness of their brand. If Jhoots uses the CPM bidding strategy, then when someone searches in Google similar keywords that your website has, then your ad will appear in the right hand side. No matter if the person clicks the ad or not, Jhoots have to pay Google for that impression.

CPA is known as a cost-per-acquisition. This bidding method is for businesses that are interested in conversions, like purchases or signups. This means that when someone clicks on the ad and does a specific task like signup or purchase a product on your website, you then have to pay for that conversion.

For all of these options, you can set a daily budget to control how much you are willing to spend each day. The costs of advertising on Google all depends on how much Jhoots wants to advertise their company. Usually £5 per day to set as a budget is good enough for Jhoots to get started. They can increase it at any given time if they so please.

Delivery Strategy

Royal Mail is a good delivery service which sends and receives packages from across the world. If Jhoots were to send 100 grams on average per item and take the ‘Royal Mail Tracked’ option. Jhoots would need to spend £4.40 per item. This will take 48 hours to deliver after purchase of the item a customer wanted. Jhoots needs to think about putting a minimum limit on checkout purchases. For example, you need to order a minimal of £10 to order from Jhoots. This will reduce the cost of post and packaging significantly because customers will be ordering in batches, instead of items here and there. This will make it so Jhoots will earn more profit on their products then a debt in post and packaging.

Security Measures

Fraud Protection

To help prevent fraudulent use of your card, here are steps you should take:

• Sign new cards as soon as you receive them.
• Keep your card account numbers and personal identification number (PIN#) in a confidential place and separate from your cards.
• Check your cards periodically to make sure none are missing.
• Destroy and dispose of copies of receipts, airline tickets, travel itineraries and anything that displays your card numbers.
• Memorise your PIN.
• Check out unfamiliar companies by calling your local consumer protection agency.
• Don’t provide information that you’re uncomfortable giving.
• NEVER give anyone the password that you use to log on to your online account or Internet Service Provider.
• Don’t provide financial account information unless you are paying for a purchase using that account.

Hackers

Before connecting your computer to the Internet, it’s important to install a firewall. Install antivirus software and keep it up-to-date. Consider using an Internet email account as your primary email account instead of using an email program on your computer. Only open email attachments from people you know; even then, you should scan the attachment with an antivirus program before opening it. Choose better passwords.

Viruses

To help avoid computer viruses, it’s essential that you keep your computer current with the latest updates and antivirus tools, stay informed about recent threats and that you follow a few basic rules when you surf the Internet, downloading files and opening attachments.

Site Hosting and Other Technical Details

ISP

To enable Jhoots to connect to the internet, they would need an ISP. I have chosen BT as their ISP. Their BT package will cost £8/month for the first 6 months and then £16 after that. It also includes line rental at £15.99/month if Jhoots wants to have line rental. The package includes many features such as:

• BT Sport app and online player
• Unlimited Wi-Fi
• BT SmartTalk
• BT Parental Controls
• BT Home Hub 4
• 5GB BT Cloud

The speed goes up to 16MB download and it has Unlimited usage. Weekend calls are free if Jhoots decide to get a line rental.

Other Relevant Information

Ease of Use

Customers are likely to not shop at a website again if the interface is frustrating. When designing a user interface, issues must be thought about such as who are the users, what do the user want or need to do etc. Pharmacy’s need to have a professional design which incorporates their title, this will be Jhoots. Features and promotions that are big on the page will attract the customer’s attention. Also include special offers and sales that the customer may be interested in buying. Department pages that promote leading products and offers, like beauty, hair care and mother and baby etc. At the bottom of the page there needs to be contact details and/or navigation features which help the customers find what they are looking for. The site also needs tab function which organises departments and sub-departments into easy-to navigate tabs that customers can click on.

Display of Products

The display of products need to be neat and organised. There also needs to be a search function which gets to the item the customer is looking for in seconds. The site can have filters like ‘Price: low to high’ or ‘Popular items’, to help customers choose the best item for them. There needs to be a clear display of the item image, price, title and any clear indication that the item is on sale. Once clicked on the item, it will bring you to a page with a larger image, a detailed description of the item, a checkout option and relevant items to the item that the customer is looking at.

Personal Details Entry

The personal details need to be relevant to avoid any infringements against the law. The essential details like, name, date of birth, address, e-mail, phone and credit details to pay for the item. This makes it so Jhoots can easily e-mail you for confirmation and send it to your address. Any other irrelevant information like previous home address, relationship status is not needed.

Payment

Jhoots would need a way for customers to easily pay on their site. The most popular choices are VISA, MasterCard and PayPal, so those are strongly recommended to have. Any more payment services are also needed to so the customer can have many options to pay, which is a good thing. Jhoots can also setup their own virtual currency like Jhooties. When someone buys a product, they get Jhootie points which enable them to purchase more products. This makes it so the customers will defiantly shop here again.

Design

Design an interface for an e-commerce business (M3)