Anthony Leaton
E-Commerce / E-Marketing Manager

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EMARKETING PLANS, WORK EXAMPLES

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Some articles outlining my experience

ARTICLE 1:

Email marketing plan

I am often asked what do you think an email marketing plan ought to incorporate?

Often the real meaning for the plan to the work-place is to answer, what are they not getting, refine who they wish to convert and the plan how to engage these people. I often sit across from employers who have not accepted the basic principle that email marketing is only as good as the message.

ARTICLE 2:

---------------------------------------------------------------------Web site Creation Decisions to take the project
in-house or use a third party specialist?
---------------------------------------------------------------------
OUTLINE

This article addresses the basic questions to filter candidates for choosing a new Web-site developer. If you are totally new to overseeing development of a Web-site, the following article should enable you to consider further points in your project plan.

Part 1: Prepare and Plan

The first question should be - ask what the company wants out of a Web site This will be a basis of your draft web project plan. Some questions you ought to ask and expand on are:

• How will it improve communication?

• What do you need to achieve this?

• Will the site sell items?

• Will there be a budget to sustain this?

• Can internal resources cope with this new media?

• What new procedures are created?

• Will the company require in-house expertise?

• How will they engage it?

• Is the company au fait with the site's legal ramifications?

• Do you need to seek expert legal advice?

• And most importantly: do you have the time to create, update, maintain and expand on the site. In other words short term loss in profit for longer term gains

• Launch times: when do you need to have the new site?

• Is this time viable?

• From experience if you are a fast worker you could get an E-commerce site up in three months and a very basic 'about us' site in two months.

• What normally delays go-live are the small actions and corrections on the site. Beware you do not run the patience of your new supplier thin. More importantly, keep on top of your project.

From my experience cheapness does not equate to the best. If the supplier tries a proprietary software or development 'lock in' the knock on effect will be to roll with what you got, or start a build over again. This can delay your portals' functionality and can hinder productivity and budget as you re-build the site. What is needed is a strategy to cover what the company hopes to achieve – this includes a long term strategy about itsdevelopment. To prevent this, ensure the developer's terms and conditions are fully understood and legal advice is taken.

A Web site istechnological extension to a business. It cannot be left un-attended and expected to bring business to your door. To illustrate this, it is like trying to open a super-cool store but, it is located in a swamp. You need to direct, market and publicize.If a venture cannot invest the time or finance to keep a site updated, current and fresh, it would be advisable to wait until there are resources to support it. This is also true of E-commerce sites. If after 12 months a site looks the same as when it was launched, complete with details of the last sales manager plus the funny spelling mistake - competitors will more than likely mention this. In addition it will look stagnant and harm your on-line brand. In time it will maybe kill it.

Part 2: Project Plan

The second stage of the project plan is to involve and include people and resources. It is advisable to involve the company's internal and external communications, sales, marketing, fulfillment, finance and anyone else who will be involved in interacting with or from the Web-site. Ask what their thoughts are? How this technology will benefit them? What you intend to do and the concerns they have? Speak to all company directors and source what their plans would be for communications and E-commerce for the next five years.

Five years from now? Sounds a long time right? Well yes and no. You will need a plan what will happen beyond the first build and how new technologies (GPRS/3g) and laws (Disability act) may have on how may have to develop your site. In your favour , it will convey to your web developers, so build it with these future plans in mind.

Part 3: Briefing and specifying your requirements

Start a document brief and outline the short, mid and long term objectives of the site. Highlight to your supplier you will require a detailed breakdown of the build in stages, timescale's their SLA, detailed breakdown of costing's(you can then see what you are getting for your buck) and who your day to day contacts are within the company.

In terms of what you should look for and question includes;

• Is this a supplier you can trust?

• Do they explain concepts in plain and easy to understand English?

• Do they promise too much?

• Do they say what they can as well as be honest to their limits of their expertise?

• Are they competent in their jobs - do members of their team show/display/convey confidence?

• Communication: can you speak to the company contact and the development team.

• Past builds - have they done sites similar to what you hope your site to be done. Are they working continually on sites over a period of years? Can they retain customers? If not, why not?

• Variance - do they all look very similar; are they creative or just too modern?

• Client testimonies - I would ask to speak direct to their clients - the older the clients the better.

First, ask colleagues and friends if they have present dealings with a web company with good relationships and are satisfied with their work. This is a good place to start. Doing a web search on web designers will be quite a task. You could look at Web-sites you like and look to see who desired the site. This information is normally found at the bottom of the page. If you belong to an association try asking members for recommendations. If you're totally stuck, post on internet forums or place a briefing on www.freelancers.net. However always shop around for at least a ball park figure and timescale's.

Out of a box site or new build?

• It is true that proprietary sites (off-the shelf) are cheaper to set up and add support. However, future redevelopment costs would mean you might have to consider increased costs.

• Not all out of the box solutions are flexible. A web-site has a life span of about 18 months. After this time new coding and functionality for future projects and further development will increase your future. Of course, when you buy a package off the shelf you are already buying a legacy product. You might find as a part of the contract hiring a specialist to code for the site might be very costly. The result will be that the site might no longer be maintained under warranty.

An open source system will enable you to have flexibility to do what you want. Initial start up times will be longer. This is because the site is bespoke. Site maintenance could be cheaper in the long run, as you can change developer. Always specify the code to be commented. This will enable new developers to understand the logic of the code and develop features quicker.

Beware the lock-in.

You might find that a developer will have in their contractual terms and conditions the ownership rights for the site code. In addition vital functionality for the code might be encoded or converted into binary. This means you will have to make a new site from scratch, redoing all your previous hard work.

A new developer might not be able to update anything and have to start from scratch. The choices for you are - trust the proprietary developer and hope for a continually good relationship or go with owning all the site and code and developing it.

What do you want from your developer?

At this point you will have to decide what you want from the site and from the developer.

• A one stop shop or different agencies handling marketing/technologies for your web total solution

• Are you confident to manage all content yourself (this demands some expertise) or a CMS solution?

• Is the supplier reliable, prompt, and trust worthy?

• Will their plan for the build based on your briefing allow profitable growth?

• Can they provide service and resolve support issues?

• will the suppler enable organic e-marketing and web-exposure

• All in all do they provide a robust and flexible web-site solution?

• Can they explain and effectively hand hold technical & on-line marketing solutions?

[To be continued]