SWOT Analysis of E-Commerce Opportunity

SWOT abstr diddle of E-Commerce Opportunity description and Market PotentialDescriptionIntroduction Describe what an e-commerce opportunity is. Cite sources.The current system was developed as part of an inbred intranet define terms clearly with sources. This relinquishs staff to set up alerts found on requests by quick clients or through new clients brought in by sales. This touch on could be automated into a web office that allowed clients to review, buy and setup their own alerts for their company without the pauperisation for manual processes by internal employees. This model favours a high volume of sales at a lower cost with the potential to access new B2B what is this? sales outside of the current high value business clients.The single unit of sales for the site is an alert. A single alert coversA repress of twitter substance ab users to follow, these can be defined and grouped by the user for management convenience. A key bea of the slur of intersection will be pre-defined groups kept up(p) by loving360 that identify the influential journalists, bloggers and cordial media commentators from specific business sectors and geographical areas. Limitations are imposed on the user for number of influencers non up to now defined per alert or group depending on the package selected and worthThe keywords the node wants to follow. This take ups an easy to understand process that defines the words to match or exclude and the logic that joins them together, each AND or OR.The people that the user sets up to alert, these can be managed as groups that can be divided up out across alerts or as individuals. Process requiring that the guessed recipient is invited and accepts the receipt of alerts and can manage their subscription to alerts is compulsory to avoid the direct of unsolicited e arms.SWOT Analysis (what are you analysing Social 360? You defy not yet identified your product or run for your proposed e-commerce activity state your service idea clearly at the beginning paragraph 2)StrengthsAlready tested as a concept.Good feedback from clients using the existing service. a few(prenominal) competitors offering connatural go.Low running costs.No stock or inventory, a digital product.Weaknesses dependent on suppliers of selective information serve, rapidly changing foodstuffplace.Requires proprietary software which could increase development time.OpportunitiesPotentially largish market inexhaustible by import/export taxes.Possibility of licensing to agencies in the future.Good expansion possibilities, humankind of new products/ function.Application can be localised for international sales.ThreatsCompetitors offer limited services for free, claim to focus on our differences.Services require high-availability service interruption must(prenominal) be avoided.Time to market is key in fast moving sector.Cost reduction devalues product for high value clients.PESTEL AnalysisPoliticalChanges in State and Europe an law could affect service succeedrs and their ability to try the elementary services required for the product.EconomicScalability of costs what is this? from suppliers needs to be taxed.Internal limits on staffing requirements and costs.Social advanced(a) social landscape online provides potential customers interested in marketing, brand analysis and monitoring.Trends towards greater public share-out of data and opinions.New Public Relations in corporations moving from print media towards social media.Technological exuberant moving changes in licensing of data from social media platforms could disrupt data suppliersReliability of product is key, technology must be selected to provide continuity in services as missed heart is unlikely to be tolerated.Use of freely available APIs provided by social media platforms should be exploited to improve informational content behind magnetic core services.EnvironmentalLow general environmental impact.Data centres are the most of import use of energy, possibility of researching most efficient providers.LegalMust adhere to the data protection act concerning customer informationMust be aware of requirements outlined in the e-commerce regulations act of 2002Must be aware Suppliers terms and conditionsStrategy/VisionThe primary e-commerce strategy is to exploit new markets that are not currently reachable through traditional sales methods. Designing a system that is configurable through a public facing website removes the need for company employees to configure and administer alerts. When combined with a package survival of the fittest process and collapsement system this creates a product with a sales process that removes a probatory portion of the cost. Reducing the cost and improving the scalability of a virtual package grassing allows for smaller businesses in a larger marketplace to to become targets for the product.Another significant factor is being able to pay minimal costs to translate and localise the in terface into regional fluctuations that can reach markets that would traditionally need sales staff who potentially need to speak the language and reside within the timezone.ObjectivesVision pee-pee a product of value to anyone marketing a brand or product or requiring social media tracking of a subject relating to their make-up. deliver the adepts a satisfying and intuitive user experience throughout all aspects of the site.Achieve take aims of reliability befitting of a service for use in times of organisational crisis and for move critical information.Produce alerts of social media content matching the clients needs delivered in a timely and bona fide way to the organisational members that need it.Maintain the privacy and shelter of users of the site.GoalsPrimary initial objective is to produce a working and testable beta version of the site within 4 months this entails seek market potential of the product, assess competitors offerings. 1 week.Analysis of the current syste m used internally to identify its strengths and weaknesses, proposing areas for improvement specifically in usability. 1 weekResearch and planning research available technology that can be used, specifically frameworks to assist with development and APIs relating to suppliers of data, email and earnings services. 2 weeksDevelopment of site to alpha version, unit, integrating and component interface testing. 2 monthsSystem testing and deployment, acceptance testing. 1 monthMarket ResearchApplicable primary market research is plinthd around feedback from existing clients using a similar product that fulfils the same function. Formulated questions and their responses can become part of account managers normal communication with clients communication theory departments. This allows for the gathering of data from questionnaire style responses conducted in a telephone interview style without the need to mail drop the client with what could possibly be off-putting marketing material.Fo r existing clients the specifications for current alert configurations double back valuable data about the market. Clients can be separated into sectors showing their employ of the system based on the keywords, trends and influential people that they choose to follow. The marketing usage for these clients will allow for more targeted publicise to different business types. Possible selling points includeBrand management. Tracking social media conversation adjoin a brand or product.Product Launch. Analysing conversation on social media follow a product launch.Consumer Dissent. Providing data to help formulate response to criticism or protest.Political/Legislative. Tracking a core political issue or legislation change that affects the market place.Secondary research includes the use of publically sourced data to understand the use of social media in the marketing and public relations departments of potential clients. This is a rapidly changing environment in marketing as companie s realise the potential for using social media for marketing purposes and the need to monitor outlets that have influence.Social media marketing budgets will double over the side by side(p) 5 years (Pam Dyer, 2013)From 2010 to 2012 the percentage of Americans following any brand on a social internet increased from 16% to 33%. An increase of 106%. (Van Den Beld, B, 2012)Competitor analysisThe closest competitor providing service of this nature is Yatterbox. Yatterbox provide a real time alert service limited by numbers of keywords and following fixed lists of influential accounts.SWOT analysis of yatterbox from the point of view of our productStrengthsWell maintained lists of influential social media commenters.Existing user base, current market leader.Good coverage of social media platforms. graphic analysis of data historyWeaknessesNo provision for self maintained lists of influential sources. exceptional number of search terms allowed on basic accounts.No real time alerts on basi c accounts.Our OpportunitiesProvide greater domination over lists of sourcesAllow user maintained listsProvide unlimited keyword search terms. struggle on price, offer limited free subscription to build user base.Offer real time and plan alertsOur ThreatsNot the first to marketComparison is inevitable, must compete on their strengths and highlight our own uncomparable selling points.Competing on price doesnt allow us to set our own pricing.Yatterbox Pricing(Yatterbox, accessed 16 may 2014)3.2 Systems EvaluationService ProvidersA significant part of the product relies on services provided by third gear parties as a reliable platform for key functionality. The e-commerce part of the site also requires payment services to complete legal proceeding.Data in that location are 2 main players in providing data streams from social media platforms who have licenses to provide social media data from a number of online platforms. Initially the main platform of concern is chitter as this has been identified as the man driver of news within social media.Datasift and Gnip both provide APIs to allow for connection to streams of content based on rules to filter data. For our purposes we only require data from users accounts that are requested by users of our product. Streams can also be filtered by keywords but we intend to provide the setup for this within our own users accounts allowing them to decide what subjects are master(prenominal) to them.Main concerns affecting the choice are the ease of integration of the product, quality of documentation, reliability of the stream and cost. It may not be possible to all in all asses these factors without trialling the services of both providers.EmailThe reliable delivery of email alerts is a critical factor in provision of the service. Usage of standard SMTP services within standard email accounts is unlikely to meet the requirements of sending large volumes of email due to concerns over spamming and unsolicited email.Ther e are a number of services that are designed to provide a high volume email delivery platform. These also broadly speaking give better logging and information about delivery statuses and failures which we can transfer to the user to allow them to manage the recipients of their alerts.Providers includeSendgridAmazon SESSocketlabsMailjetThe relative advantages and disadvantages of each would have to be assessed using demo services and investigating the APIs in applicability to our own needs. At a first look Sengrid appears to be a good fit with clear documentation with examples of integration in a number of platforms, roaring independent reviews and a competitive pricing plan.Registrar/DNS servicesThe main reason for the registrar is the readjustment of the required domain name for the website, but other concerns include the ability to manage DNS Explain implication . This requires that the registrar used provides good online services for the administration of DNS records.HostingFo r this type of honk shared hosting (where servers are shared by a number of customers) is unlikely to provide the level of control and reliability required. Some of the processes we intend to setup on the server, such as the stream connections and management of email queues and processing, require a level of access that is generally limited or non-existent on shared servers.This leaves Cloud Computing service or Dedicated innkeepers as possible platforms for the services. For this project there are a number of unknows that mean the usage of cloud computing is undesirable. Bandwidth, disk and memory usage and SQL storage costs are difficult to pretend and can be expensive on cloud platforms. These are easier to assess as a known cost quantity on a dedicated system where it is possible to buy services with unlimited bandwidth and hardware more than capable of hosting the site for a reasonable length of time into its launch. The downside is reliability of a single point of failure i n the hardware but this can be addresses by mirroring important services across colocated servers and using load balancing to route requests.SSL CertificateMost Service Providers who sell Secure Socket Layer certifications have a number of options ranging from basic encryption security departments that just offer the encryption required to secure data in transit to those offering users greater confidence through vetting processes to hear the organisation using the certificate is who they say they are. The certificates offered are usually 1 one of four of 4 typesSimple SSL security, offering encryption services identified by the use of https protocol prefix in the browser address bar and the browser padlock symbol.Domain Validation SSL, same as the uncomplicated with added checks for the validity of the domain. Users can click on Site Seal icons to check the validity of the domain with the certificate issuer.Organisational Validation SSL, same checks as the domain with extra vett ing process for more information on the organisation when clicking the site seal icon.Extended Validation SSL, the most stringent checks are carried out by the certificate issuing authority to validate legal, physical and operational existence of the organisation and that this information matches official records. This results in the browser displaying a highlighted green validation bar in the the address area with details of the substantiate company.(GlabalSign Ltd, accessed 19 May 2014)Whilst not all forms of payment integration described below strictly require the use of an SSL certificate any transfer of user information is best encrypted in this way and is inseparable if when hosting localised impediment pages. The use of encryption coupled with verification checks that can be performed by the user increases their confidence in the site, however I am unable to find any study or clear statistical evidence that there is an increase in user confidence or sales conversion rate th rough using Extended Valuation SSL over the simpler forms.Payment GatewayConsiderations for payment gateways includeCharges imposed and how they scale with volumeApplicability of the integration. Quality of the API and documentationSecuritySome payment gateways are linked to a merchant bank account and provide the possibility for a more seamless checkout experience with a greater level of customisation and control over the checkout experience. Sagepay, a popular UK payment provider has 4 possible levels of integration a serves as a good example of possible solutionsForm integration.No customer data is stored on site, entire checkout process handled by Sagepay.Simple and quick to integrate, shortest development time.No on-site security issues from storing customer data.Limited customisation, no control over checkout flavoursLimited opportunity for customer data recording.Server Integration. guest transaction details can be stored locally, card details and payment pages handled by Sa gepay.Card transactions simplified by sagepay.Advantages in storing customer transaction information, improve user experience on site.Limited customisation, no control over checkout steps.increase security issues by handling customer data.Server inframe integration.Similar to the server integration but allows greater control through embedding the sagepay card payment step into and iframe in the checkout process.Card details handled by sagepay.Store customer transaction information locally. plenteous checkout customisation, only the card details step handled by sagepay.Greater opportunities for customer interaction during checkout. (help, chat, feedback etc)Increased development time, checkout steps need to be created and tested.Increased security issues through handling customer data.Direct integration.All aspects of the payment process are handled on site including customer card information, great level of control over the checkout and completely seamless as it only communicates w ith sagepay at the point of transaction processing from the local server.Greater control over customer checkout, data handling and checkout flow.No front-end considerations for integration, user experience entirely customisable.Longest development time, requires greatest consideration of implications.Greatest security risk.Requires PCI DSS certification (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard)(Sagepay, accessed 15 May 2014)Other payment solutions do not require merchant accounts and can not be seamlessly integrated into the checkout flow. Systems such as PayPal offer solutions for easy integration that will always require that the user leaves the payment issuing site to go through the payment process (although PayPal does offer merchant account solutions as well), transaction inform can be provided through call back systems such as PayPal Instant Payment Notification. There are advantages in using PayPal as it has a very large user base. This user base has become accustomed t o the convenience of faster checkouts as there billing data and preferences are already stored and do not require re-entry during the checkout procedure helping to increase sales conversions for new customers.(PayPal, accessed 15 May 2014)Project Management/Version ControlAs with any software development version control is essential to manage the codebase. There are currently 2 main considerations for version control that are both open sourced and have online services to provide remote repositories for code.Git is a wide used Version Control System and can be hosted on github.comMecurial provides similar functionality and can be hosted by bitbucket.orgOther services go further than just version control by providing project management tools that fit in with software design methodologies such as Agile. These includeAssemblaBasecamp