E-Business Strategies: Roadmap for Gifts4You.com - IT EC7.390

This report provides a detailed analysis of e-business strategies for Gifts4You.com, an online gifting company. It explores the role of Twitter hashtags and Facebook groups in promoting the business, along with a Google AdWords campaign strategy. The report outlines website enhancement strategies to increase unpaid views, promotion through email marketing, and future change recommendations for the website, including the use of whitespace, website speed optimization, bullet points, and calls to action. The development methodology is described, covering requirement gathering, system analysis, planning, implementation, and testing. Furthermore, the report presents a roadmap for the e-business, including the company's vision, objectives, target audience, ethical issues, security risks, rationale for the e-business strategy, ideal organization structure, cost and revenue model, and integration of physical world strategy with the e-business strategy.

Running head: IT EC7. 390 EBUSINESS STRATEGIES
Eastern Institute of technology, Auckland
Programme: Graduate diploma in information technology
IT EC7. 3900 EBUSINESS STRATEGIES
Assignment Number: 2
Name of the student: Tulsiram Venkatalingamurthy
Roll Number: 2018004030

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Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................3
Detailed analysis of the online gifting company:............................................................................3
Role of Twitter hashtags:.............................................................................................................3
Role of Facebook group:.............................................................................................................5
Google ad words campaign for www.gifts4you.com:.....................................................................6
Website enhancement strategy to increase unpaid views of content:..............................................7
Promotion through email marketing:...............................................................................................8
Future change recommendations for the website:...........................................................................9
- Use of more white space:..................................................................................................9
- Website speed optimization in the future:.......................................................................10
- Use of bullet points:........................................................................................................10
- Calls to action:................................................................................................................10
Development methodology:.......................................................................................................11
Requirement Gathering Stage:...............................................................................................11
Analysis of the system:..........................................................................................................11
Planning as well as designing:...............................................................................................12
Implementation:.....................................................................................................................12
Testing and Quality control:..................................................................................................12
Roadmap for the E-business:.........................................................................................................12
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Vision of the company:..............................................................................................................12
Objectives:.................................................................................................................................13
Target audience:.........................................................................................................................13
Ethical issues and security risks:...............................................................................................14
Rationale for ebusiness strategy for the company:....................................................................15
Ideal organization structure required for ebusiness:..................................................................15
Cost and revenue model for the company:................................................................................16
Integration of physical world strategy with the ebusiness strategy:..........................................17
Conclusion:....................................................................................................................................17
References:....................................................................................................................................18
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Introduction:
Ebuisness is one of the fastest growing business strategies in most of the companies in
today’s world. Online sales and marketing is widely used by the companies since it eases the
business operations and makes it easier for the customers in the process of shopping.
One such website known as www.gift4you.com is all set to start its online sales portal
from where customers can purchase gifts of all types and age groups and for all occasions.
Customers need not travel to physical stores, they can directly place the orders, and the gifts can
be delivered to the homes of the person intended to in gift-wraps. This report will accept the
different aspects of designing such as plat form and also the associated advantages as well as
disadvantages. A proper roadmap for the successful implementation of the platform for
www.gifts4you.com will also be explained (Clemons et al., 2013).
Detailed analysis of the online gifting company:
Role of Twitter hashtags:
Hashtags can be used in social networking websites such as twitter as well as Facebook,
which in turn makes it more visible to every other users. Using hashtags make a particular post
or product more popular and users get to instantly connect to the features as well as the benefits
of the post that has a hash tag with it (Zhu et al., 2014). The advantages of using hashtags with
www.gift4you.com are discussed below in the following points:
- Including Hashtags in the Twitter/Facebook posts related to www.gift4you.com will
help the users to search for the site or a particular product sold in that site even better.
It can also be used in the twitter bios as well as product descriptions (Chiu et al.,
2014).
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- Hashtags can be used to search for any particular content in twitter related to
www.gifts4you.com. This helps in spreading further information about the website or
even any special edition line of products (Chen et al., 2013).
- Real-time communications on a particular product available in www.gifts4you.com
can also be initiated and the feedbacks from such conversations on social media can
be used by the company to further improve the lines of products.
Figure 1: Screenshot of twitter hashtag for www.gifts4you.com (Source: As used by author using
www.twitter.com).
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Role of Facebook group:
Facebook groups helps in knowing about the customer feedbacks as well as their
perception of the products they offer and can use the feedbacks for the further betterment and
improvement of their products before selling on their website. Through a properly managed
Facebook group for www.gifts4you.com, the company will be able to find its target audience by
letting the users search for a particular product or line of products by just typing the keywords
with which they can be searched in the website. Users can also search by typing in keywords or
hashtags that other users might have used to post the pictures for the same product within the
group (Tanjung & Dhewanto, 2014).
Figure 2: Screenshot of Facebook group for www.gifts4your.com (Source: As used by the author
using www.facebook.com).
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Figure 3: Screenshot of Facebook www.gifts4your.com group for Christmas offer (Source: As
used by the author using www.facebook.com).
Google ad words campaign for www.gifts4you.com:
Before setting the campaign, it is first important to set the goal of the campaign. The goal
of the ad words campaign is to market the products of www.gifts4you.com in Google and let the
users now about the different products of offered by the online company. The goal of the
campaign is to drive sales, improve the revenue from the online portal, and at the same time
ensure to develop the brand name of the company and increase the customer database who
frequently do online shopping.
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It is also important to understand and define the campaign type and grow the network
using the Google advertisements. Campaign type can determine where exactly the customers can
get to see the advertisements of www.gifts4you.com in the internet such as on Facebook or on
any other site etc. Search networks can also be created and it can be ensured that
www.gifts4you.com advertisements appears even on search engine results. For instance, Search
Network campaigns can be created for the online website which is mainly meant for the display
network (or the Search Network containing Display Select) campaign. The steps for successfully
implementing a Google ad campaign for www.gifts4you.com is explained below as:
1. After clicking on the AdWords account of www.gifts4you.com.
- If the campaign is already created click on Campaigns tab and go to the next step.
- Else, create the first campaign
2. Click on the button that says + Campaign.
3. The campaign type for www.gifts4you.com should then be selected from the menu that
come up. The most suitable type of campaign will be "Search Network with Display
Select" "Search Network only," as well as "Display Network only".
Website enhancement strategy to increase unpaid views of content:
Some of the useful features of www.gifts4you.com are described below, which if
properly implemented will boost the number of unpaid views of the website:
- The content of the website should be colorful and attractive and should have
important information such as the company contact numbers and the detailed
description of the products, etc.
- The website should be user friendly and the users should be able to easily navigate
through the different webpages in the website (Starr & Minchella, 2016).
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- The website should be fast and responsive.
- Links to other contents such as other webpages should be there in the website, which
in turn makes it an even more interesting surfing experience for the customers.
- Metadata about www.gifts4you.com such as a brief description or a tagline describing
the website should be used such as “Crafting your curiosity” etc. to increase visibility
for the website even if it is unpaid (Srivastava & Pandey, 2013).
- Domain names should be helpful as well as useful for the customers and they
keywords should be lucid for finding an exact product precisely on the website for the
ease of the customers.
Promotion through email marketing:
Email marketing is another very useful ways of marketing the website through which
numerous users will get to know the different products offered in the website. However, it is not
an easy task to promote business through emails and www.gifts4you.com should give away
something free of cost to the customers in return for collecting their email addresses. For
instance, the company should come up with informative eBooks and newsletters for the
customers it is targeting to send the promotional emails about its own products. It might also
have to come up with innovative business strategies such as free gifts for first time responders to
online email notifications which might attract more customers in turn. Free reports as well as
samples of products sold by the company has to be first prepared for shipment to the customers
before beginning the campoa0ign of email marketing of the products. Once that is done,
www.gift4you.com can look forward to develop a drip-fed campaign through systems
like Aweber, Constant Contact, Mailchimp as well as Get Response (Shen & Bissell, 2013). The
company should not immediately target to increase its revenues and only sell to the customers.
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Instead, it should first build a healthy relationship with the consumers and then looks forward to
sell and market its products to the customer through the email newsletters (Flanagin et al., 2014).
Figure 4: Email marketing strategy for www.gifts4you.com (Source: As used by the author)
Future change recommendations for the website:
Some of the recommendations to improve the overall user experience of the website are
explained below:
- Use of more white space:
More use of white space keeps will make the website simple and presentable for the
users. It will give a neat and professional appearance of www.gifts4you.com.
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- Website speed optimization in the future:
The speed of the website should also be optimized in the future to ensure faster
surfing experience for the users. Often slow loading of pages is a major source of
customer frustration and they do not have much time to wait too. It has been seen that
slow operations causes more than 20% of the website bounce (Sevin, 2013).
- Use of bullet points:
Key information on the different categories of gifts for different age groups and
different occasions should be properly segmented using bullet points for proper
understanding of the users, so that they do not have to randomly search for any
particular item of their choice.
- Calls to action:
Attractive calls to action or keywords that can help the customer easily locate a
particular product using specified words should also be incorporated. Appropriate
images should be wisely incorporated in the website for representing the products as
and when necessary in the future (Goh et al., 2013).
Development methodology:
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The different stages of the lifecycle of the development of the website are described
below in the following points:
Figure5: Stages of website development (Source: As used by the author).
Requirement Gathering Stage:
The raw data as well as the requirement of the future changes and development of
www.gifts4you.com has to be first collected and analyzed and the possibility and the expected
outcome of implanting the changes will have to be studied (Plants, 2013).
(Schniederjans, Cao & Triche, 2013).
Analysis of the system:
The requirements derived from the first stage are carefully studies and then a list of
requirements as well as deliverable are defined in order to successfully carry out the change in
the website.
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