The Effects of E-Commerce on Entrepreneurship Chapter 9

1. More people accessing the Internet, more often during the day.  44% of Americans get on the Internet daily, as opposed to 36% in  Those that do tend to work 14 hrs per week on it.  Other 50% tend to ignore the Internet  1/3 of Americans do not have Internet at home and do not plan to get it.  Only 8% of Americans fully use the interactivity and connectivity of the Internet and their cell phones (are “wired”).  Information overload!

2. Expectations of businesses regarding e- commerce  People expect, at the very least, for businesses to have an informational web site  Becoming a measure of quality  Place to pay/buy online  Nearly 10% of the world has shopped online at least once.

 New sales channel  72% of companies selling online say it increases sales  International possibilities  Unmanned sales time, 24 hours a day  Information opportunity  New business opportunities

 70% of small business owners have an online presence  Others say their products aren’t suitable online or they don’t see any benefits to selling online.  Every company should have a plan for integrating the Internet SOMEHOW into its operations.  Creating long-term relationships and long-term success on the Net could take more time than doing the same thing face-to-face.

 We have a cheesecake store, called Tennessee Cheesecakes.  What are some of the applications that the web could offer us?  What are some of the considerations that we need to keep in mind while developing those applications?

 What is it that the Internet is supposed to do for our company?  How much are we going to be able to put into this?  Will our products sell on the web? How?  How will you handle spikes in orders? Visits?  How are you going to host the site?  How are you going to guarantee security of customer information?  How do you plan to market your site?  How will you set up your site?  Who will you get to design your site?

 What do you know about doing business on the web?  Expensive or inexpensive?  Hard or easy to promote?  Technology or business model advantage?  Customer service and support?  Order fulfillment?  Is the Web over?

1. Focus on serving a market niche. 2. Develop a community with common interests. 3. Don’t use people’s information to spam. 4. Somehow tie into a partner’s community. 5. Promote, promote, promote! 6. Get onto the best search engines  Yahoo!, Google, MSN,

 Web Analytics  Tools that measure ability to attract customers, generate sales, and get customers to return.  Commerce metrics, segmentation information, content reports, process measurements  Recency, click-through rate, cost per acquisition, conversion rate  Log analysis software

 Privacy  How your company uses the data customers give it.  Security Security  40% of companies experience hacking  Properly developed firewall and intrusion detection software  Credit card payment acceptance