SWOT Analysis for E-commerce Websites
With the emerging trends and rise of the digital market, the e-business sector has offered several forms of opportunities within the several process within the sector. E-Business could be defined as the process of using technology and valuable information in order to help in easing the process of business. With the recent form of ongoing developments in the market of e-commerce, it has been extremely crucial for the companies to adopt newer form of strategies for maintaining a huge base of customers and thus gain a competitive advantage over other e-commerce sites (Whitmore, Agarwal & Da Xu, 2015). The companies who are in the process of developing newer kinds of applications should focus on some important factors, which would be helpful for the development of a trusted and an efficient e-commerce website. They should be able to understand their target audience and thus would need to adapt such kinds of strategies in order to fit into the current market.
In order to build a huge form of customer base in the market, the e-commerce websites or companies should primarily be able to consider a SWOT analysis of their websites. The SWOT analysis would be able to define the various kinds of aspects that would be needed to get a hold over the current market position and thus be able to take some necessary steps in order to deal with the changes. Secondly, they should be able to map down a structure of their presence within the e-commerce market. This form of e-commerce map would be able to consider different kinds of presence in the market that would include their presence and impact on the social media platform, offline media, development of a proper form of website or mobile application and email content and availability (Wirtz et al., 2016).
The e-commerce websites should also be proactive in building an e-commerce website and it should be performed in a systematic manner. The various kinds of challenges should be understood and the main factors that would be needed in order to build an efficient website should be highly considered. Another important thing that should be highly considered is the development lifecycle of the website systems. The business objectives, information requirements and functionalities of the system should be considered widely during the development of the e-commerce website. After the completion of the website building process, the testing should be properly performed in order to detect any kind of bugs within the internal systems and thus should be proactive in removing them from the system. Different kinds of search engine tools should be provided within the application that would be able to optimize the searches. Hence, a proper form of improvement architectural structure should be developed that would be efficient enough for building the website. Various kinds of policy structures should also be met during the building of the website or application. These platforms should be highly responsive and should be able to perform the different functionalities required by the customer (Huang & Benyoucef, 2013).
Structuring an E-commerce Presence
The rise in the banking based on internet connectivity, it has led to the growth of various kinds of payment methods. These form of payment methods have been useful and have been developed in order to provide secure form of e-payment transactions. The online payments within the e-business platforms have eased the process of online payments as they offer several forms of advantages to the people. The different methods of payment methods within the e-business sector are credit/debit cards, net banking, mobile based payment and wallets within the e-business platforms. The ease of payments within the e-business sector are providing different kinds of advantages within the sector such as they help in the meeting the expectations of the customers, speeding up of the processes of communication, saving the trouble of paying manually and reasonable form of prices. The online form of transactions and the security within the payment modes should be revised and updated regularly. The virtual currencies and the digital cash process should be highly efficient enough such that no third parties would be able to intercept within the systems (Schumacher et al., 2013).
The security aspects within the e-business strategies should be given the topmost priority. Some of the security aspects that are mainly considered within a corporate setting of e-business are based on encryption, laws based on electronic signatures, certification authorities, digital signatures and other features. The process of encryption would be very much useful based on the perspective of e-business as they would be able to ensure the security of transactions that are placed within the e-business platforms. The security structure within the e-commerce systems is in a multi-layered structure. The security within the systems is a much needed aspect as this includes the personal details of the public, which might get threatened due to misuse of the current systems. The points, which might get threatened within the e-commerce systems are mainly based on client, server and the pipeline meant for communication. Different kinds of attacks on the systems such as malicious codes, unwanted programs, hacking, phishing, data breaches and other kinds of newer attacks should be taken into deep consideration (Chaffey, 2015). Hence, the security within the systems should be increased highly and the payment modes should be encrypted with higher level of encryption and various cryptographic measures.
The security infrastructure of the cloud platforms and the IoT connected devices should also be considered and they should be improved. A proper form of security plan should be designed and the various teams that are responsible for designing the security structure within the systems should also be highly considered. There should also be a higher form of consideration based on the laws that are meant for the security policies within the e-commerce market. The role of the government should be highly efficient in order to take strict form of measures in cases of misuse of the systems. The consideration of all these aspects would lead to higher forms of gains within the highly advantageous market (Laudon & Laudon, 2015).
Proactive E-commerce Website Development
Defining a proper kind of strategy is very much essential for the development of a proper form of e-commerce business. This kind of a successful implementation of a business model would be helpful for defining the revenue model, opportunities within the current market, competitive environment within the market, newer kinds of market strategies, development of a proper form of organizational structure and an efficient management team. The e-business strategies have streamlined and automated the various kinds of communications and processes, helped in the ease of delivery of products and have improved the efficiency of business and communications. In the process of supply chain, the e-business has increased the levels of reduction of costs during transactions and have hence improved the responsive of change within the business processes. The strategies of e-business have helped in the transformation of the sector of retailing as the preferences of online shopping are increasing rapidly (Alsabawy, Cater-Steel & Soar, 2013). In some of the sectors of e-business that includes finance, there are newer forms of competition that have emerged within organizations that have adopted the techniques of e-business.
The team within the e-commerce business model should take into consideration some of the major form of aspects such as their target customers and the things that would attract them towards the website. This might include various kinds of promotional offers, interactivity of the website or mobile application and various other factors. The internal team should also be assured of the revenue model of the business and hence should take necessary steps based on promotions, advertising and other factors. They should also be aware of the opportunities within the existing market and thus should make an approach towards developing newer forms of potential towards the development of changes within the business approach. On considering the current market strategies, these businesses would be able to understand the high level of competition within the market and thus take actions based on those decisions. The e-commerce business model should be able to decide about the type of advantages that are provided by them, which would help them in attracting a wide number of customers to their website. The businesses should make a proper form of strategy within the market that would help them to target their audience and bring in newer form of changes within their application. These objectives within the business should be changed continuously in order to fit according to the changing needs within the market (Yeboah-Boateng & Essandoh, 2014).
Payment Methods in E-commerce Platforms
The e-commerce business model such as Business-to-Customer (B2C) should be highly considered. Various kinds of considerations such as the revenue model of the business based on B2C should be understood. The various aspects related to B2C such as the e-distributor, exchanges, e-procurement should be understood and implemented carefully. These e-commerce models have the capability to disrupt the market based on newer form of products. Based on the understanding of these aspects, it would be helpful for the e-business platform in understanding their model of business and perform an analysis structure (Bohnsack, Pinkse & Kolk, 2014).
With the growing demand of e-business platforms, there have been major form of improvisations within the sector as to improve the processes within the system and increase the efficiency of business processes. The e-business strategies entirely depend on the availability of internet connections and other kinds of technologies that would help within the running of the operations of the organizations and businesses. The e-business platforms are extremely user-friendly as the users just would have to simple click on the products and buy them. The e-business platforms highly depend on technical research skills that help in the improvement of the processes within the business (Veit et al., 2014). It has been seen that in the recent times, there has been a huge surge of the number of customers who make use of the e-commerce platform for purchasing the products. The behavioral patterns of the customers based on their purchases is determined by the various companies who are responsible for providing various kinds of access to the systems. Consumer behavior is a very important aspect that should be needed to be considered based on which the businesses would be able to predict their future activities.
The e-business platforms help in analyzing the demographic based data based on the contents of the web and social media. The e-business processes should be able to target those customers who would prove to be relevant for the business processes. The e-business websites should have the in-built systems based on marketing, which would be helpful for reaching established and verified customers. The online behavioral pattern of the customers is able to depict the varying needs of the customer with the fast changing product availability within the market. Some of the factors that needs to be considered are social norms, psychological factors, cultural aspects and demographic factors. These factors would help in understanding the response of the customers based on a certain product that would be launched in the market (Lim et al., 2013). There are other factors such as the purchasing items of the customers that should be understood. Based on this, the websites would be able to launch newer functionalities within the market and would be able to integrate newer kinds of products within the market.
Security Measures in E-commerce Strategies
Some of the major factors that are able to shape the business platforms are trust and utility. Trust on the online products, businesses and the services offered by those business should be highly important for developing a healthy relationship with the business partners. Better prices and speed of providing the services should be maintained highly. A multi-channel plan of marketing should also be considered for the development of a proper website. This would include the concept of traditional online marketing, offline marketing and mobile based marketing platforms. Establishing a good relationship with the customers is also an important aspect. The businesses should reach up to the expectation of the customer and should also be able to give a perfect shape to the expectation of the customer products (Spieth, Schneckenberg & Ricart, 2014).
Mobile Marketing could be defined as the use of mobile devices for the purpose of performing the various kinds of marketing activities. This kind of marketing platform is fast growing and thus has tremendous impacts on the marketing networks. The primary goals of social based marketing is to target their audience and produce before them some of the eye-catching services and products. The main goal of the business is to encourage their customers to buy their products and thus would indulge with conversations. Some of the big social marketing giants are Google, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and many others. These social media platforms should be used by the various business applications in order to promote their products. The main process of social marketing is that the businesses should perform fan acquisition, engage their customers by showing them a wide range of products that would fit according to their needs and choices (Lavy & Yadin, 2013).
Facebook Marketing is one such important tool, which could be used by various marketers in order to grow the strength of the user base. This kind of marketing strategy aims to maximize the level of connections among users. Twitter Marketing is another such important tool that would be helpful for business to grow as they would be able to promote their products by showing them to a wide number of users. The high form of effectiveness of the campaigns based on social marketing are mainly aimed to target the users and promote their products. This could be measures by the amount of likes, page views, unique visitors and the shared posts. These kinds of details would be extremely necessary for deciding the choices of the customers and understanding their basic needs (Beránek, 2015).
Designing E-commerce Business Model Strategies
The marketing could be based on location. There are some business who mainly target their users based on a certain location. There are some consumers who have the likelihood of responding to some special advertisements based on their location. Some of the marketing platforms that are based locally are Google, Facebook, Twitter and Apple. They would be able to deliver different kinds of innovative strategies based on collaboration with the team members in order to deliver healthy form of solutions for the improvement of the business. The different forms of progressive companies who implement the e-business strategies are in the progress of realizing the value based on collaboration between the various employees and thus forming different kinds of teams who would be responsible for improving the sector of business. Some of the customers would need to search for their local based products on the online platform. The local marketing could prove to be useful in providing them with the services. Some of the most important tools that would help in supporting of local—based marketing are proximity marketing, location-based app messaging, and mobile local social network marketing and geo-social-based services marketing (Savolainen, 2014).
The online retailing platform could be defined as the most widespread platform that is mainly dedicated to serve the customers with the best possible manner. In the recent markets, it has been seen that the mobile based e-commerce sectors are exploding at a huge rate. The social networks have a huge impact on the social based e-commerce platforms. Based on the recent form of scenarios, it has been seen that the local based e-commerce platforms have reached to a much higher level. This has led to the rise in the amount of sales of the e-commerce market. With the wide availability of products within the e-commerce market platforms, it has led to the wide form of selection of goods and services that also includes luxury products. There are some special retail sectors that have also shown a tremendous growth. These online retail sector also make use of big data in order to deal with the issues raised within the marketing sector. This kind of technology is also aimed for predictive based marketing as they would be able to understand the diverse needs of the customer and thus would act according the needs of the customer (Laudon & Traver, 2013).
Various kinds of strategies should be considered based on the services provided by the sector of marketing. There are some factors that should be taken into consideration. During the development of a proper form of business application. Some of the key factors that should be highly considered are the different kinds of barriers that are posed for the entrance of newer form of products within the market. The power in the hands of the suppliers and customers should also be measured. There should be a proper kind of evaluation based on the existence of substitute form of products within the market. The value chain within the industry should also be processed (Pantano, 2014). Another form of important fact that should be highly considered is the different forms of competition within the market. The different kinds of challenges faced within the market should be overcome in order to deal with the necessary changes.
Business-to-Customer (B2C) E-commerce Model
Big Data is the most widespread discussion in the recent times that has gained much widespread form of attention within the recent form of marketing. The wide form so drawbacks based on the impact of predictive form of marketing should be taken into consideration. The widespread use of predictive form of marketing would be useful for understanding the varied forms of needs of the consumer and thus be able to suggest better form of products before them. With the help of these customers would be given a wide form of choices and they would be able to choose the best form of products. They would also receive a major form of change within the various kinds of updates and notifications about the latest form of products available within the market. This would enhance the experience of the customers and thus would also be able to bring the efficiency within the business scenarios (Palo & Tähtinen, 2013).
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