The E-Commerce Business Model Samples for Students

Question: What is the E- commerce Business ? Answer: Introduction TT Edu is a small educational institute operating in the educational industry in Australia for quite some time. The business activities of the organization includes assisting other educational institutes to promote their educational programs, conducting educational fairs and selling tickets and other merchandise related to the educational fair. This report is a proposal for the management of TT Edu to implement an e-commerce system in order to increase the sales of the products and services along with the increase in the business of the organization. The proposal includes a number of modules of the e-commerce business suggested to the organization such as the e-commerce business model, revenue mode, network and communication infrastructure among many more (Einav, 2014). The e-commerce business model The e-commerce business model will define the business activities of the organization on the internet, which in turn allows the organization to have more sales of the products and/or services. The e-commerce business model also defines the customers to be targeted by the marketing and promotional activities of the organization on the internet, which in turn provides a clear understanding to the management of the organization regarding the targets of the overall business processes (Fang, 2014). The e-commerce business model for TT Edu will be a combination of the B2B and B2C business models, which in turn will allow the organization to target both businesses and end consumers through the marketing and other business processes. So, the business model for the e-commerce system of TT Edu will consist of two components as mentioned below (Huang, 2013). B2B component The B2B component of the e-commerce business model will target the educational institutions, secondary colleges and other businesses involved in the education fairs. This component will consist of the business activities responsible for attracting more number of customers from different businesses involved in the business activities of TT Edu. So these businesses or institutions involved in the business activities of TT Edu will be targeted by this component of the e-commerce business model in order to increase the sale of the products and services provided by the organization. The business activities included in this component of the e-commerce business model of TT Edu are mentioned below (Qu, 2015). Assisting educational institutions to promote their educational programs Arranging the floor space for the educational fairs Supporting the educational institutions to promote their programs in local and international educational fairs Providing value-added services like construction of stand in the exhibition along with the travel and accommodation arrangement Organizing and/or distributing marketing materials before the fair Hospitality arrangements during the fair for the exhibitors Arranging fair tickets for the exhibitors Promoting educational programs to different secondary colleges in Australia and overseas Coordinating with the government, business-level and industry contacts for activities related to the educational fairs (Rahayu, 2015) Carrying out effective marketing campaigns for the educational institutions B2C component The B2C component of the e-commerce business model of TT Edu will target the aspiring students and employees of the educational institutes. This component will be responsible for introducing the students with exciting educational programs and to provide the employees with opportunities to mentor students. The business activities involved in this competent of the e-commerce business model are mentioned below (Da Costa, 2016). Supporting educational institution employees interested to mentor and groom students Supporting students to find interesting educational programs in the educational fair Selling tickets to the students and prospect employees of the educational institutions Revenue model This section of the report focuses on the revenue model to be implemented in the e-commerce business of TT Edu. This in turn allows the organization to yield revenue from its e-commerce business. Advertising The website of TT Edu will host strategically placed advertisements of various other products and services related to the business activities of the organizations. There are a number of advertising agencies operating in the internet, who pay for the advertisement on the basis of number of clicks, visits and transactions through the website of the host. The e-commerce website of TT Edu will provide advertisements to related products and services provided by other organizations in the educational industry, which in turn will allow the e-commerce business to yield revenue (Belkhamza, 2015). Subscriptions The e-commerce website of TT Edu will have a feature to allow the users to subscribe to the newsletters and offers from TT Edu. This in turn will allow the users to be notified about the new and upcoming fairs along with the interested educational programs to the aspiring students. This subscription for the users will have different prices for the individual users and for the business users (Falk, 2015). Transaction fees A small amount of transaction fee will be charged from the users in order to gain profits from the transactions carried out by either the individual or business users. These transaction fees will be application to the transactions for booking fair tickets, purchase of the merchandises and for subscribing to the newsletters from TT Edu (Sila, 2013). Ticket and merchandise sales TT Edu will be selling the fair tickets along with a number of other merchandises which will allow the organization to yield revenue from the e-commerce business. The tickets and merchandise sales will have more exposure to the potential customers due to the presence on the internet along with extensive marketing activities (Rodriguez, 2014). Network and communications infrastructure This section of the report focuses on the network and communication infrastructure required for the successful e-commerce business of TT Edu. Information superhighway (I-way) This is the major requirement for the implementation of e-commerce system for TT Edu. This network infrastructure in the workplace of the organization allows the organization to have the e-commerce system to be deployed in the internet. All the workstations and devices in the workplace of the organization will be connected to the internet through this efficient network infrastructure (Laudon, 2016). Communication infrastructure The information superhighway to be implemented in the workplace of TT Edu can be augmented with the communication technologies. This setup can be supported by the implementation of any of the information and communication technologies in the workplace of the organization in order to ensure effective communication in the business activities of the organization (Falk, 2015). Hardware and software This section of the report focuses on the hardware and software requirements of a successful implementation of the e-commerce system for TT Edu. The hardware infrastructure required for the implementation of the e-commerce software includes the below mentioned components. Web servers for hosting the web applications and database Development workstations for the employees working on the web applications Backup servers to hold the backup data High speed internet network and switches to enable efficient internet connectivity for the developers The software components required for the implementation of the e-commerce system are mentioned below. Operating systems along with the browsers and development tools for the developers Server operating system to run the web applications TCP/IP addresses along with domain names for hosting the web applications Web authoring tools Hosted virtualization tools Database management system (Barnes, 2013) Security protocols The security issues associated with the e-commerce system will be managed by the below mentioned components. Implementation of encryption mechanism for data storage and transaction management Digital signatures to validate all the transactions flowing in the system Security certificates to validate the identity of all the external systems seeking connectivity to the e-commerce system Role based access control along with two-phase authentication for the users, employees and developers (Choi, 2013) Restricted access development workspace Implementation of the security management tools in the servers The e-marketing strategy The e-marketing strategy of the e-commerce system of TT Edu will focus on the advertising and promotional activities carried on the internet. This strategy will include the below mentioned activities for effective and efficient marketing process. Advertising the products and services in the website of TT Edu itself Advertising in other websites including the social media websites Various blog posts Online brochures Email marketing to send the newsletters and interesting facts to the customers directly Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to increase the visibility and presence of the e-commerce website in the search engines results (Falk, 2015) Content marketing to increase brand awareness and traffic. Social media marketing Marketing automation to automate some of the e-marketing activities Payment systems The e-commerce system for TT Edu will allow the users to have a number of payment systems to be available for their transactions on the website. These payment systems will include credit cards, debit cards, internet banking and e-wallets. All of these payment systems will be allowed for any monetary transactions carried out by the users. The payment systems will be integrated to the e-commerce system through a large number of existing Application Programming Interfaces (API). Business ethics The ethical strategy implemented in the workplace of TT Edu will allow the organization to ensure privacy and other ethical concerns are managed effectively. The management will create a set of ethical guidelines for the employees to follow in the workplace of the organization. These guidelines will allow the employees to take the correct decisions during ethical dilemmas. The employees will sign code of conducts to maintain the privacy and integrity of the e-commerce system. The business guidelines implemented in the workplace of the organization along with frequent training activities will allow the employees to adhere to the organizational policies, which maintain the privacy and integrity of the e-commerce system (Chiu, 2014). Legal issues The legal team and policies of TT Edu will focus on the legal issues associated with the e-commerce business. The e-commerce business model will ensure that the images and content used in the e-commerce website are not used through copyright violation. The business model of TT Edu will ensure that the content presented in the e-commerce website is compliant to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations. The e-commerce website will be trademarked with the TT Edu icon to follow the trademark act (Andam, 2014). Customer service The customer service strategy of the e-commerce business of TT Edu will allow the customers to have multiple options to connect with the customer care representatives of the organization. The customers will be allowed to write to the organization through the form provided in the website. The contact numbers for calling the customer care of TT Edu will be provided in the website. The customers will also be provided an option to request a callback from the organization. A separate customer care team will be responsible for the queries or complaints of the customers for the e-commerce website (Falk, 2015). Measuring success of the proposal The success of the e-commerce website can be measured using a number of tools. DeLone and McLean success model measures the success of the ecommerce website based on a number of factors such as information quality, system quality, use, net benefits, user satisfaction and service quality. The success of the website can also be measured on the analysis of a number of data collected by the data analytics tools implemented in the e-commerce system. These data include inflow traffic, number of purchases per visit, total number of transactions in a specific amount of time and the loading time of the web pages. These factors allow an analysis to reveal whether the e-commerce website is success or not. 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