The Internet, as one of the most dynamically developing media, interferes in our life to the great extent. Therefore, the growing popularity of e-commerce that changes traditional shops by opening virtual markets is not surprising. Launching e-business or its development enables attracting much more, earlier inaccessible, customers, attractive offer’s presentation and better customer relations management. The abovementioned as well as other advantages of e-commerce are widely acknowledged, promoted and encourage new entrepreneurs to investments in e-business. However, only few business representatives are aware of the expenditures to be incurred in terms of work or money needed for success in this field.
Similar to each investment, launching e-business demands establishing goals compatible with the type and size of the activity. The goals should be financially feasible, as in case of low budget we will not be able to strive for them, whereas in times of prosperity there is a risk of incurrence of unnecessarily high expenses and overinvestment.
The next important step worth considering is the choice of a system’s architecture that would be both proper for our activity as well as it would serve as a base for our company. This issue is important because of two reasons. First of all, it influences the expenditures of the company as a whole, and secondly it determines its functionality. In sales system it is possible to distinguish three basic configurations.
The first one is called basic and is proper for those companies that treat Internet exclusively as the source of offer’s presentation and do not focus on online sales. In case of such architecture, the customers may find presented offer via search engines or thematic catalogues. The disadvantage of such system is a slow process of attracting new clients, whereas the advantages are low expenditures both for advertising as well as for the construction of the system itself.
Figure 1. The basic architecture of e-commerce system
The second of distinguished configurations is so-called typical system architecture (fig 2). It is typical for these enterprises which apart from on-line sales want to manage relations with virtual customers and promote themselves on the Internet. This architecture is based as well on the active commerce policy (the presence in the Internet shopping malls, electronic systems of payment).
Figure 2. The typical architecture of e-commerce system
The final architecture of e-commerce systems is configuration called advanced (fig. 3). The enterprise that is based on this architecture aims not only at customer relation management but also strives for winning customer’s loyalty and providing offer meeting customer’s individual needs. A very important issue related to this type of architecture is reliable and up-to-date information about the accessibility of the offered products, in a way that the customer who is to receive the ordered goods, will not get the information about supply’s delay or what is worse the lack of goods.
Figure 3. The advanced architecture of e-commerce system
The choice of the proper architecture should be thoroughly considered and adjusted to the assumptions about the enterprise, because it makes up the limitation of its possibility. On making the decision about the architecture one should also take into account future functionalities of the system related to the given company’s development as the later change of the architecture could be difficult After some time, when the number of customers will be increasing, simpler solutions may limit the need of relations management. The system that has modules facilitating sales statistics, is in this case of invaluable help. The solutions by EPRO have not only the abovementioned functionality, but also many others facilitating on-line sales. Thanks to well chosen graphics and functional system design, shop as well as administrative panel management is intuitive and reasonably facilitates shop’s running without exposing it to the loss of time and money.
The issue that is worth considering before entering e-market are costs of such a project. The construction of simple e-commerce system based on free of charge applications which does not take into account online communication with suppliers or customer relations management (without CRM module) costs about 1000 zlotys. However, companies that would like to become recognizable among many offers accessible on the market should take into account greater expenses Although shop design based on the template solutions is cheap, it does not allow for creating unique image which serves as a firm’s identification tool. It seems that only dedicated applications (e.g. those offered by EPRO) facilitate system’s adjustment to the preferences of a given company. The mere construction of the CRM module demands individual approach taking into account both branch and the specificity of the market. Such complex enterprise amounts to about 10 000 zlotys.
The purchase and implementation of e-commerce system does not guarantee success. Properly designed website will attract customers for getting acquainted with the offer, but first of all they must find our shop. For this purpose serve promotion activities that at the same time are significant part of expenses. The most popular and for the time being, the most effective form of promotion is placing the advertisement in the big, frequently visited Internet shopping malls and website positioning in the popular search engines with the possibly top position. Monthly cost of advertising campaign depending on the set of promotional tools varies from 190 to 12500 zlotys1, whereas the cost of top page positioning amounts monthly to 400 zlotys or more2.
Starting the activity on the e-market is an important decision; therefore, it should be carefully considered and made with the awareness that it is both work- and financially-consuming. It is a continuous process demanding from its initiator being up-to date with the information considering target customer’s needs and preferences. Such business is not easy and brisk, but demanding proper preparation as well as development conditioned by the scale of interest in the enterprise. Moreover, the product that we want to offer may not be eligible for online selling and the target group may not correspond with the group of people shopping via the Internet. Following the above mentioned fact, is it cost-effective to sell online? The answer to this fundamental question may be the fact that the number of the Polish Internet users, who did some shopping online in 2006 exceeded 55 percent3 and there are no rationales that it will dwindle. Quite the contrary, the trust of e-users towards e-commerce seems to be increasing every day.
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1Price list of advertising package, the internet portal Onet.pl, http://pasaz.onet.pl/wspolpraca/cennik.html, (accessed 19th March, 2007).
2Price list of positioning package, http://www.eactive.pl/pozycjonowanie_pakiety.php, (accessed 19th March, 2007).
3Gemius SA, Raport Internet 2006, www.gemius.pl. |
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