Question

Assume that you developed an e-commerce site for the purpose
of doing business. As a continuation of your new e-commerce business, you are to develop strategies to
accomplish the following:

1. Establish and maintain an International footprint for your
e-commerce site.

2. Analyze how the use of mark-up languages on the welb
can aid in increasing sales and an Internet presence

3. Develop advanced functions by using a set of e-
commerce software that provides a competitive advantage

4. Plan and develop new e-commerce initiatives.

5. The implementation of new e-commerce initiatives for the purpose of growth and sustainability

Include an analysis of what part(s) of your current or future e-commerce site you may want to outsource; provide the
benefits and disadvantages of outsourcing these segments. Finally, provide a detailed explanation of Project Management issues concerning the development and implementation of e-commerce solutions and initiatives. Critical thinking and
strategy should be addressed throughout your analysis.

Answer 1

To put things in perspective, I will use the example of setting up an art retail online store for a global market using ecommerce and online platform as the major revenue generating channel.

To define the business a bit more, the basic business model will be to have visual artist register themselves on my website and showcase their artworks for selling purpose. The website will also be used by art connoisseurs and collectors to browse through the artworks available and purchase as per their own taste. The payment will be through an online payment gate and logistics will be managed by the company itself.

The revenue streams will come from a number of sources, viz. (i) artist one time registration fee (ii) Commission charged to artists from every sale of work and (iii) ad space.

When we are talking about a global marketplace, the size and scalability of operations will obviously require large amounts of investment. With capital constraints in mind, the idea would be start small and then gradually increase the geographical span of the business. In order to do so, the largest markets for art are to be recognized. The mature markets such as US and Europe remain favorites, along with emerging markets of middle east, India and China. So these are the markets that my e-commerce business will target initially.

To maintain an international footprint, first activity will obviously have to be creation of a website. Now since the markets that are being target are vastly different from each other, right from the languages spoken to the cultural nuances, we are to create the same website but with different domain names. So for example, if the firm’s name is Fables, then we can have a fables.com for English speaking markets, fables.in for India, fables.cn for China, so on and so forth. The idea would be to create customized content in local languages.

Web content is to be developed using HTML, CSS and Java script and the ecommerce site called 3DVAS will be used to create content. The USP of 3DVAS is that one can create a 3D gallery space for users to browse through various art pieces. Of course the same can be done using advanced programming techniques, however the same may a require a big team of programmers and coders to develop the primary content.

The website will not only feature various artworks but will also engage with local population through various outreach programs such as art workshops and seminars. Although these will be offline activities, they will help in generating traffic towards the website. The website will also engage with local art galleries and show case their products across different geographies, in return of a revenue sharing model. This will be a win-win initiative for galleries having a limited reach due to the brick and mortar business model that they follow.

Logistics will play a pivotal role in running the business and hence this will be either done using strategic tie ups with local logistical partner or will be completely outsourced to global logisitical companies. This will be inevitable, since the business will follow the model of an aggregator and not hold any inventory of artworks. The logistics partner will collect the artworks from the respective artists/gallery, package it and the ship it.

The payment gateway is the next critical factor. Since operating in different markets, we will have to do research in terms of which gateways are popular and more relied upon by local population. For example, PayPal is not so much popular in markets such as India as it is in the European markets.

The firm will have to invest moderately on the teams that will be working on the ecommerce platform. There will be a team of content developers working on the user interface for the customers. There will be a team of curators who would be selecting artworks for display on the website. Marketing team will have to be very strong and robust since they would be working on both the online as well as offline marketing channels.