E-Marketing versus Traditional Marketing In a Cotton Fabrics Manufacturing Fir
Table of Contents
Executive Summary 3
Introduction 3
1- Web Marketing Strategy and planning 4
2- Internet Marketing Versus Traditional Marketing 5
3- Development Time Line and Milestones 6
4- Website Breakdown 7
5- Website Navigation System 8
6- Web Major Components, Features and Standards 9
6.1- Design 9
6.2- Ease of Use 9
6.3- Headlines 10
6.4- Photos of Products 10
6.5- Searching Motor 10
6.6- Special Offers 11
6.7- Advertising Products 11
6.8- E-Shopping 11
6.9- Public Forum and Message Board 13
6.10- Loading up Time 13
6.11- Other features 14
7- Monitor Effective Sales 14
8- Usability Tests 14
9- Management and Maintenance 15
10- Outsourcing the Website Design and Maintenance 16
11- Website Assessment and Performance 16
12- Benchmarking Tool 17
13- Conclusion 18
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References 19
Appendix 1 20
Appendix 2 21
Executive Summary
E-marketing is about getting people attracted to company’s electronic market place, then convincing them to take an action: buy, join, subscribe, read more, etc. Today more than 70% of the European companies have a website (David Jobber 2004). The way different types of businesses benefit from E-business are different among industries.
The benefit of having such marketing is high in Tourism industry and relatively low in the gas and oil industry. In brief, the need for E-business is highly dependent on the type of product or service offered by a firm and also based on the nature of the business whether Business to Business, Business to customers or Business to Government.
E-marketing may cover most of the business online aspects including articles and press releases, websites (our case here with Parsley Pattern), market research and as a whole advertising through the web. An effective CRM (Customer Relationship management) seems to be more manageable through the web and E-Marketing since it is usually faster to get a feedback from the customers as a result of E-Shopping.
Security and concerns over E-shopping cascade is for sure the main issue in online purchasing versus traditional systems.
E-Purchasing a cotton fabric among all other available choices is a result of finding the whole process “easy, rational, joyful and secured” in a multi step high-tech environment.
Introduction:
“Paisley Pattern®” is entering to the E-Marketing mainly because of tighter competition and the highest cost of traditional marketing. It follows a “business to customer” pattern as the most typical E-commerce pattern in use by small companies. This has been decided after long traditional presence and finding the early adopters of such techniques quite successful. Walmart is the largest retailer who adopted E-Marketing long time back.
“Paisley Pattern®” domain, www.paisleypatterns.co.uk will be the first web presence of the firm offering different range of cotton fabrics. Optimal utilization of this space is a competitive advantage. It is the job and the creativity of the business owners to come up with more innovation without compromising the corporate goals and image.
The site is planned to be launched within a month and will operate through a third party contract considering the essential features of a good website.
A heavy-to-load website is a danger which stops many users from visiting the web no matter how fantastic the design is.
The challenge is to design a website which represents products and services of the firm and simply brings a joyful journey for the visitors. In this way, all customer segments may have access to what they are looking for in a short period of time.
And finally it is very important to understand that putting a sample in the net is far more than a simple catalogue. There can be much more information exchanged if used in an effective and efficient way.
1- Web Marketing Strategy and planning
Setting a market strategy for Paisley Pattern means optimal usage of its resources in a sustainable way to bring a competitive edge compare to its competitors. The current situation shows that the company is challenging other competitors in order to move towards leadership.
The companies who are followers may adopt a highly effective strategy to become a challenger or may be a leader in the future.
This clearly demonstrates that setting a strategy is not a one-time practice but should be considered as a continuous and vital process in any organization in a changing environment.
The above diagram shows the transformation of Paisley Pattern by adopting a proper E-marketing strategy moving towards leadership also how followers might be positioned based on their adopted business model.
A strong web presence is therefore defined a key to better differentiation.
The sales force will continue their field presence and face to face visits of the customers and introduce the practicality, ease of use and security of the E-shopping from their website in parallel.
2- Internet Marketing Versus Traditional Marketing
While E-marketing has various advantages over the traditional marketing, it has serious disadvantages too. These are in fact threats to the success of the firm and hence the expected outcomes:
- Today, everyone complains about the SPAMS that find their ways to almost any computer. These intruders have reduced the level of trust on incoming E-mails. That’s why the efficacy of sending E-mails to registered customers may not be as effective as before or at least the role of traditional mails has not vanished yet.
- Absence of physical touch is what people care when purchasing an item. Be it a shirt or in our case “Cotton Fabrics”, touching the material gives us an idea about the quality. The same applies to colors which may differ from what they appear to be on the computer screen.
Such sensitivity may not be considered when purchasing a four-GB external memory from an internet website as far as the function is guarantied. The table below compares some other feature:
Conventional Marketing E-Marketing
Person to Person most of the time
One can be presented to many
Press release difficult to archive News Room with available archive
Mails are costly and slow E-mails are too many and cheap
Accessible for few working hours only Always available
3- Development Time Line and Milestones
The web consultant should be selected among those who have experienced the business contracts and have an idea about the industry.
They should be requested to analyze and present the E-Marketing activities of the competitors based on their web presence and the innovations they might have presented in the web.
Hence a secrecy agreement is needed after the initial concept is well explained and understood. Unfortunately the same threat applies to Paisley Pattern when the website goes live and the competitors may copy an innovative idea or service almost immediately.
That’s why the visible part of the web should only present a tip of the iceberg and the technical features beyond the visibility range should be strong too.
A six-month timeline should be enough for the whole process considering a test and removal of the possible errors and corrections.
The diagram shows the timeline starting March 2008 and the milestones
4- Website Breakdown
When starting to design a website, the project should be seen as a whole and then the answer to the question that how much time is needed to be allocated.
With a look to the allocated time for building a small website, it is clear that the most time consuming part of the design is in fact the extensions and testing the functions. Here's a typical small-site structure.
It can be concluded that the total time necessary to run a website close to what is estimated for Parsley Pattern would take about 100 hours to develop. Obviously this is much less than what should be spent in reality over traditional marketing when the outcome is by far less influential.
5- Website Navigation System
Nothing can be more confusing than a misleading, sometimes hardly visible and malfunctioning navigation system. Arrows, buttons and search boxes are those need to be well located in the website. Everyone experienced a viscous cycle when searching for a specific section in a website and gave up as a result.
This usually happens when a website is too crowded or basically too simple which doesn’t support a special feature for instance RSS which is not available in all the websites. There are usually three types of such navigations in any Websites:
1- Essential Navigations are those which are available in any website
2- Specified Navigations are those specified for a webpage only
3- Secondary Navigations are those helping a smoother browsing within the website.
In Parsley Pattern, the navigations should support all three and the role of secondary navigation is very important. Those are basically the navigations which direct a customer to find a fabric of his choice based on different classifications. In fact, this segmentation can be assisted in their presence.
Finding all the Pink cottons with special pattern for instance can be controlled by two drop down menus adjacent to each other. This filtering process will help the customers to shortlist their available choices. In “Contact us”, a visitor can reach to the closest outlet or representative from the company.
6- Web Major Components, Features and Standards
A good website should possess many features. Among those the following top ten seem to be repeatedly emphasized for web designers and those business owners to create a website which is both appealing and successful in guiding the visitors. The top ten features selected for Parsley Pattern are:
6.1- Design
There is no doubt that a good design would be highly appealing. On most of the good websites you can see an alluring interface designed for the most popular monitor resolution (1024×768). Most of the time web pages designed by two famous web-programming languages (HTML, Java Script but Ajax would be included as well). This is much livelier than what can be presented in the traditional marketing.
6.2- Ease of Use
Visitors especially when the website is offering a service or product across the world need to find their way easy. Obviously designing a site supporting main languages is not an expensive service to differentiate it from traditional marketing which can be reached to local customers only. This will be a big advantage when a small company like Parsley Pattern enters an expansion phase. An Easy to Use site would be more interesting and successful for a visitor with intermediate or low language skills. A website with optimum usability is the one which makes customers doing what you expect them to do.
6.3- Headlines
The site is suggested to have a RSS news feeds system, the latest RRS headlines are shown by a News Line at the home page of the site. The RSS system keeps the visitors constantly updated about the latest change. This let the visitors getting lots of information on the first survey. It is possible to have RSS feeds on your own RSS reader system. (Outlook, Internet Browsers readers etc.) Traditional marketing can never compete with this service.
6.4- Photos of Products
Photograph are playing an important role in shopping habits of the customers as we all know, “Customers think about what they see”, so a good view of a product and at the same time a bad one, may change their mind and consequently a total change in the purchasing idea. In the case of Parsley Cotton it is important to remember that the absence of a physical touch may cause reluctant customers to stop buying and step back. Is that really what is shown? It happened many times that what you see in a computer screen is by far different from what has been delivered to you. A monograph usually gives valuable information about the product including the usual name of this type in the market; dimension also regular price and price after promotion if any.
6.5- Searching Motor
Searching motor is one of the useful website features helping a visitor find what it’s looking for. A special products or general terms within the context of the website can be searched.
A successful search result means a lot and may cause a return visit in the future. It is exhausting when you flip a tick catalogue and search for an item you saw before but can’t find it now (The usual case in traditional marketing).
6.6- Special Offers
Special offers are utilized for showing what the company wants a customer to buy. This offer would be a new fabric with a special pattern or an old one, would be the most expensive and exclusive one or the cheapest one or even both at the same time. This would be interesting for customers from different social, cultural and age segments, due to the fact that they all would be able to find the best choice for themselves.
6.7- Advertising Products
Special effects such as 3D-effect, shadows or playing with lights would make an interesting space. The customer should always be able to find out the latest products in a nice and easy way. In the case of Cotton Fabrics a 2D-effect would suffice instead of a 3D-designe.
Advertising by E-Marketing is much cheaper than traditional ones. Imagine sending out 500 mails to the local customers. The cost would be totally different and much lower for E-Marketing. This would be much more if the customers are scattered all over the world. The following expenses are basically omitted in E-Marketing.
The cost for print outs versus E-mailing is compared below
E-Marketing Traditional Marketing
Paper - +
Postage - +
Printing - +
Mail service - +
6.8- E-Shopping
A computer, a website and a customer with a banking account makes the E-shopping a working cycle. This is in fact electronic money, which makes small or big transactions possible.
The E-shopping is one of the most influential components suggested for the website. Actually this part itself has sub sections as following parts:
I. Presenting & categorizing available Products for E-shopping, they must be sorted out as their popularity, color and most practically material ultimately can reflect the price which has its own attraction in making a website classified for different customer segments.
II. Specifying countries which are E-shopping-supported or not supported, because several countries are still not imported into the list of E-Shopping-supported countries (Libya, Iraq and Iran and some others have political and technology limitations.)
III. And finally, showing and informing the buyer about the site security verification for E-Paying by credit cards such as Visa or Master cards.
The E-Shopping part of Paisley Patterns website would be a relief to visitors if a well known security company such as PWHC (Price Water House Coopers) or VeriSign is verified by the presence of their logo.]
IV. Online catalogs, direct the customers to find the item they are searching for, like a special cotton fabric or color.
The payment may commence through Credit Cards, Debit Cars, Charge Cards also there is recently a type of E-Money introduced to be a replacement for the traditional money.
This money can be E-mailed, stored and used when the user wants to. The problems for this type of money are:
1- Hard Disk damage will contribute to loss of money
2- Information bugs
3- Disclosing the buyer information
4- Not supported by all internet browsers
6.9- Public Forum and Message Board
The site should posses a “Public Forum”. This part of the site lets visitors to share their personal experiences with others or get an idea about the products when used by others provided that the company policies supports such information sharing. Naturally the tendency of including this part is more among the companies offering quality products most of the time with a slightly higher price than the competitors.
Using a color code system might help when visitors are visiting the message board. For instance the administrators and moderators of the company may use the color code Blue and other visitors look Bold to differentiate among them.
As a customer based data, the forum provides a golden opportunity for quality firms in collection of genuine feedbacks. A professional analysis of the collected data would highly contribute in recognizing the customers’ needs, correction of the past mistakes/defects as well as setting the future strategies and most/least attracted products for each defined customer segments.
6.10- Loading up Time
There are number of Internet Connections types (such as ADSL, Cable, Wireless, Dial-up and so on). For sure, the connecting speed is affecting the loading time. Today a Dial-up user is considered a low-speed (56 kbps at last) and a user with Cable is a high-speed one. Soon a cable might be perceived as a slow connection with the fast upgrade in E-technology. It is important to design a website moderately loadable specially a website which contains too many pictures such as Parsley Pattern to be useable for all. It shouldn’t be too slow even for those using a dial up connection. This is possible by avoiding too many high resolution pictures in the product section.
6.11- Other features
Bandwidth or maximum rate, at which data can be transferred over a communications network, plays an important role in this case. Although both bandwidth and the type of Internet connection are important pre-requisites in developing a reasonably fast website, following certain sequences in downloading may further accelerate the performance of the website:
1) Menu Bars
2) Texts
3) Simple Pictures
4) Heavy Pictures
5) Simple Animations
6) Heavy Animations
7- Monitor Effective Sales Pages
For many business sites, the purpose is to select the highest sold products and get statistics about the taste of the customers. This is in fact a statistics feedback based on number of hits per product. It is important to have access to the statistics showing the countries or servers you have been contacted through. You also need to have a counter showing the number of hits to your website. This can be overt or covert.
Loading up a website with too much detailed information is dangerously harmful and may reduce the number of visitors dramatically. It is a common mistake among the industry owners to perceive a user, is interested to know almost everything about the products or services they offer.
8- Usability Tests
When designing a website it is advisable to test it in different stages of the work. First of all a draft of the website is needed. This can be even drawn on a piece of paper.
The best is to perform the website testing couple of times while progressing and ask a group of users to have a feedback on its usability. The selection of users for testing the website is the owner’s responsibility. They should find a group of testers who cover almost all sectors which might have access to the website in reality and their constructive points have to be written in a special form. If extracted correctly, these ideas would affect the E-Marketing performance. In major test events the presence of the site owner, the site builder and couple of users are recommended.
9- Management and Maintenance
The website contents become older and older during the passage of time.
When customers come to see the latest cotton patterns and they will not find more than what they had seen before, they may simply never come back again.
Instead, they will look for another updated service. This will be crucially important in industries with the high number and turn over of products and as a result more website updates are needed. The need for updating a website may come from:
• Product / Service update or change
• Price Change
• Content or date changed
• The executives or other personnel changes
• News or newsletters
• Rewarding a selected employee
• Auctions on special patterns or colors
• Change the advertisement
It usually happens to find more and more spelling or grammatical mistakes in a website. When visiting the website over and over, there are still misspellings or at least the sentences or phrases which can be corrected again and again.
Usually such repeated correction is not possible in traditional marketing or would be very expensive task.
10- Outsourcing the Website Design and Maintenance
Having a suitable workforce and enough expertise in place, the website can be moved as an in-house service. It is clear that for a website like Parsley Pattern as a small company, the cost effectiveness of such move should be carefully studies.
It is always best if the website is taken care like a plant and treated kike an alive organism. One year after launch and updating through the third party for a website like Parsley Pattern, the company make gradually think up how to change the look and if the company can own the expertise of having the website in house.
Since most of the job is to add, remove or change in the text or pictures (including prices or the body of the website) one person with enough knowledge of web designing may do the job.
The benefits of having such updates in-house are:
• Prompt marketing of the new product
• More product description and features can be explained
• Site will look lively as a result of changes and improving the grammar and influence the visitors.
It might be a wise decision to extend the website contract for specialized services such as optimizing the search engine or adding small applications if needed.
Using an online site builder is not suggested for a company like Parsley Pattern however, it is a cost effective tool for developing personal WebPages or Websites.
11- Website Assessment and Performance
It can be a good way to measure the efficacy of the website and plan to improve its weak points. Doing that one should ask he followings:
1- Have I got benefit from the website?
2- How far we are away from the E-commerce we set and expected goals?
3- How frequently we need to update the website and how we do it in reality?
4- Do we have all the necessary features in our website helping the visitors?
5- Do we effectively analyze the website traffic?
6- Who is our main customer segment?
7- How running a campaign on the website is translated into sales figures?
And more questions like this will give us a clue of having our site assessed. Another way of measuring the site (like we have done to test the website) is to have a group of users and let them fill up a simple questionnaire. This may not be as effective as measuring usability of a website since many ethical matters are also involved.
12- Benchmarking Tool
There are few online benchmarking tools. Companies who are professionally offering such services basically advertise these websites to attract customers. Excluding few valid features for benchmarking the web sites, the controversy in recognizing the good and the bad features may largely vary among industries. Many “bad” features might be considered “good” in another website. Therefore, a solid website benchmarking tool may not be applicable for all.
Benchmarking the Cotton Inc through an online benchmarking tool
We have used a benchmarking websites http://www.ec-plus.net/benchmark and the consolidated report for the company “Cotton Inc” is given here. We have no doubt that such tools still need to be developed if considered as an accurate analysis system. Information Technology (IT) if used optimally, may function as an effective service to the company’s marketers. It is useful in implementation, operation and maintenance of the corporate information systems and the company’s mission. IT strives to implement proven and cost-effective technologies that provide employees, clients and consumers with reliable and accurate systems to enhance the business performance. Paisley Pattern ability to increase the demand for cotton, as well as compete successfully in the global marketplace needs a smooth transition from traditional marketing towards E-marketing as a competitive advantage.
13- Conclusion
Entering the E-marketing, Paisley Pattern has focused on time and energy in many areas to enhance corporate communications between employees, offices and clients. It has planned with the main objective of reinforcing the sales force face to face activities currently in place. Another advantage of having a strong E-marketing program is to provide the employees with the flexibility of having a mobile office and boost the access to the promotional materials in a website context. As a threat, a website is a wake up call to the competitors where ideas, creativity and activities targeting the same customer segments are accessible through the web. Although such threats may arise as a result of live E-Marketing presence, firms should foresee the future of not having such presence. The outlook seems to be impossible when a long geographical range of initiating the business is intended. Also employees are encouraged to read cotton news and be well aware of the relative data and major events all over the world.
“Paisley Pattern®” website is an important tool for reaching corporate, industry and consumer business sectors. It represents the company’s expertise and image in the cotton industry 24 hours a day. When moved to the company as in-house service, the website is expected to provide global users with a wealth of cotton-related information, news, fashion and marketing, as well as global services in higher updated frequency. Quality plays a major role in utilizing the latest information systems and the technology to deliver innovative web content and improve overall productivity. The traditional marketing however is more touchable by the customers and the feeling of having a physical touch is still playing an important role in our selection of choices. Lack of physical touch and considerations over E-Shopping are probably the major existing issues in establishing a fully fledged E-Marketing activities. As the competition emerges, the relatively low E-Marketing cost is playing a major role in saving huge amount of resources. These on top of reaching to more customers have been recognized to be the most beneficial features of E-Marketing over the traditional one.
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