Site Implementation  «Prev  Next»
Lesson 3 Formulate business design goals
Objective Formulate business design goals for e-commerce site.

Formulate business design goals for ecommerce site

The business design goal stage is where you carefully determine the nature of your products and services and the needs of your customers. This includes determining the name of the site. Part of this task involves examining the business issues, such as the product and its potential customer base. As you can see, this stage occurs before you even consider designing the Web page interface or purchasing hardware and software.

Target markets

As you develop your business plan, it is vital that you target a particular market. This involves doing some market research. Helpful sites are
  1. Dowjones.com.
Each of these sites can help you determine current trends and discover information about the market niche or area of interest that you want to penetrate.
Once you have an understanding of your target market, you can then consider the best ways to position your particular product or service.

Branding

Your site must help you create an identity for the product or service you create. It should complement the message that you want to deliver about the product. As you develop your e-commerce site, remember that the site is perhaps the primary way for you to represent your message and product. Below are some key questions to help you make sure your site is current with your branding[1] strategy:

Key questions to help you make sure your site is current with your branding strategy.

  1. Beyond making sales, how can an e-commerce site help your product's image?
  2. What niche is the company in?
  3. How is the product currently represented?
  4. What slogans and language accompanies the site?
  5. What message do you want to deliver?
  6. What is the current color scheme of the product, and how can the site complement this scheme in the site?
  7. How do similar companies represent their product?
  8. Who are we targeting?
  9. What is the product's current image?
  10. In what ways can we add value to the product's current image without jettisoning the current theme?
You can use search engines such as
  1. Yahoo,
  2. Google,
  3. Bing,
to learn more about related sites.

Portal:

A clearinghouse that a visitor can treat as a "one stop shopping" experience. A portal [2]provides services, as well as links to areas of interest on the Web. In the next lesson, you will learn how to set business model revenue strategies.
[1]Branding: The ability to market the image of a product consistently.
[2]Portals are also an attractive option when discussing branding options.