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Lecturer: Steffen ZornStudent: Xu LinStudent ID: 14088155

Executive summary

Due to the changing technology, electronic marketing is

regarded as a powerful weapon in promoting and selling

the goods. The main advantage of an on-line sales

websites is no time&location limitation. And it could

attract thousands people and bring numerous potential

opportunities toward a company. Thus, team digital, as a

traditional electronic goods whole seller is trying to

transform their business directions from traditional in-

store selling to online selling. However, being an online

selling platform, previous webpage needs to be changed.

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And some other main functions need to be modified or

added. This report would present a brief analysis of the

present webpage and then propose some suggestions based

on the analysis.

Introduction

Team digital is an electronic devices whole seller and

reseller in Western Australia. After 5 years’ operation,

Team digital have developed numerous business areas such

as photography, I.T, Printing, Video and training.

Meanwhile, in each major business area, some relevant

products would be categorized, for example, digital

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cameras and cameras lens are concluded in the

Photography. However, due to the increasing industry

pressure from competitors, team digital started to change

their operation concept from traditional visual

demonstration in the warehouse to online marketing. The

manager, don, said explained that(Don, personal

communication Oct 1st , 2011):

Team digital is facing a serious problem that created by the recent trend,

which refers to the consumer behaviour change and threaten by other

distributors.

Thus, this report would first analyse the industry

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background based on Porter's five forces, and then give

an web analysis by focusing on main areas. Lastly, some

strategic suggestions would be given in order to improve

the team digital's overall performance.

Industry background

Hereby, the Porter’s five force framework could be used

in analysing the team digital’s situation. Be more

detail, the Porter’s five force consists of bargaining

power from suppliers, bargaining power from buyers,

threats of new entrants, threats of substitute products

and also the rivalry(Porter 2008, 78). According to the

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industry analysis, the ‘bargaining power from suppliers’

refers to those product manufacturers for example Cannon,

they hold the price-bargaining power when providing the

equipment like lens or cameras to them, since only few

players in producing the relevant equipment. The second

force which refers to the bargaining power from

consumers. Consumers could have strong and consistent

influential power to teamdigtial. Being a whole seller

and reseller need to achieve a certain level of profit by

having a large number of purchasers, from a different

perspective, that group of consumer could affect team

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digital's profitability. The third force is the threat of

new entrants; except those existing large retailer

stores, some other business types are trying to catch

the consumers’ passions on either electronic goods, for

example, the secondary shop in the online trading

platform like eBay. And some specialty store also created

threats to team digital like Apple store in the Murry

Street. While the threat of substitute products could

also seen as another force, it may take the lens as the

example. Many buyers or photographer would find other

outstanding lens in other place rather than just

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selecting cannon and Nikon lens in the team digital. The

lastly, the dynamic industry competition (rivalry) is the

most urgent force. Don(Don, personal communication Oct 1st

, 2011) said that:

The main reason why we are trying to change our strategy is because of the large

distributors, like JB Hifi, DICK SIMITH, Harvey Norman, we do have a certain loyal

customers who would like to buy products from us, and however, our price is still

not attractive to them. And we can’t drop the price; it’s not sustainable and

profitable. That large retailer could get a lower price of any products due to its

nationwide stores. The earn profit through a large sales and price difference.

However,We can’t. And only thing we can do right now is expanding the business

into e-marketing, which may bring us more clients.

Website analysis

As a strategic movement, Team digital started change

their websites. And the following content would do a

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strategic analysis based on consumer online shopping

preference. While, the first impression from the main

page is more like a general information-focused page

which would be the shortage of being a sales-based

website. Shown as the figure 1:

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When the potential clients looking at this website, their

attention would be attracted by the middle pictures and

meanwhile, it weakens other function in the first place.

In the navigation banner as shown in the figure 2 is too

concentrated although, the sub-menu would be shown when

the clicking the main title. The red circle in figure2

show that how the navigation menu when web browser search

relevant information by different category.

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Thirdly, being an online sales website which need a quick

and advanced search engine(Hong and Cho 2011, 469; Hsin-

Hui, Wang and Chang 2011, 511). However, the whole

website doesn’t have search engine. When checking with

don, he said the navigation menu could lead clients to

the specific page which contain all the information that

about product. Yet, search engine is a trend in any

online sales website which could help users to locate the

product that they want, Sometimes, it can be called as

the user-friendly function(Rao and Goldsby 2011, 692;Tsao

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and Tseng 2011, 1007). Research shows the quick respond

search engine may bring more clients because of its

efficiency and effectiveness (Iryna, Amialchuk and Taylor

2011, 730). An online sales website may contains

thousands products, if the search engine could give the

results within seconds when clients entering the

keywords, people would have more time on selecting other

products, we call it random browsing which may bring

other potential clients (Tojo and Matsubayashi 2011,

281). Thus, teamdigital need a search engine in order to

be an online-sales oriented website.

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Fourthly, the main top banner are suggested to be

replaced by the recent promotion ads rather than showing

the pictures of the team members. An online sales

website is showing a quick &accurate product related

information which captures clients’ eyeballs in the first

place (Tojo and Matsubayashi 2011, 281). The figure 3

demonstrates the Team digital’s commitment and hard-

working employees.

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However, in such a fast moving society, promotional

information in the top banner may be better choice.

Additionally, that company commitment may be move to the

company logo in the top left side. (As the figure 4show

the company logo)

While, during the interview with don, he said that team

digital have a special community which called Digital

Village, basically all registered members could log in

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and share different ideas in the forum, however, he

acknowledged that this function is not attractive because

of the impact brought by some professional forums, like

Flicker and Space. The left side of the webpage also

contains other functions like ‘join Digital Village’ and

‘Team Digital News’, however, all those functions could

be integrated as a whole and it is suggested to be moved

to right side of the page or top right based on clients

reading habits. The following figure5 show the original

format of the page’s left side.

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Additionally, second hand trading is becoming popular

especially in the electronic industry. Some high-end

users may did not want to use electronic goods because of

the changing and improving technology, those equipments

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would be very expansive like the cannon 1DMKIV.

Meanwhile, there is a certain group of people who would

be the new entrants and looking for cheap but high

quality electronic goods. Thus, Team digital’s second

hand forum could be placed in sharper place. Like the

navigation menu rather placing the left bottom as the

figure 5shows.

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Lastly, the bottom banner of the main page is irrelevant

to an online sales website. Don said that as a whole

seller and reseller, they would like to place a link to

show their providers of the products in the shop(Don,

personal communication Oct 1st , 2011). However, Team

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digital is transforming from an information-based website

towards online sales-based whole seller, thus, those

manufactures’ logo is unnecessary. And it could be shown

in the search engine when categorize their products.

Team digital use the middle part of the webpage to

promote their advertisement. However, all the products

advertisement is camera-related. Clients may neglect the

other business area like Apple products, printers,

training course. Additionally, the content of the middle

haven’t been change for nearly two month, thus the

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frequency of the content change should be increased. By

combing with previous analysis, the middle part needs to

be modified by adding more content.

Suggestions

1. The top space in the web page could be modified as the

figure 9 in the end of the paragraph. It is simple with

straightforward looking and contains the users function

page once the user log in. This is a trend in online

marketing website which enhances user’s control to their

accounts(Tojo and Matsubayashi 2011, 281). Meanwhile, as

an online marketing tool, safety is still considered as

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the priority to users(Hong and Cho 2011, 469) . Thus in

the top left, ‘buyer protection’ hyperlink is added which

help users to download security add-on when doing online

purchasing. Like what have been mentioned in the previous

content, Team digital have a forum named ‘digital

village’, here it is changed as ‘community’ in the top

right space. Besides, due to the huge change in the main

page, previous user may not familiar with the website,

thus, the web has ‘customer support’ in the top as well.

The purpose of the simplified the interface is to create

a neat and friendly impression to the users.

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2. The search engine is suggested to be added under the

top banner. There’re two parts in the search engine,

first column is about typing the keywords, as long as it

refers to the relevant product information, and second

column is about the category. For example, if clients

want search CANNON 5D MARK 2 with 18mm -220 mm lens,

however, s/he can’t come up with the whole name, then

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s/he could just enter ‘5D’ in the key words areas, and

then select cameras in the ‘category’. After clicking the

‘Search’ button, the results would be shown in the page.

And in order to satisfied consumers’ needs, a further

function of the search engine could be added, which

called ‘compare box’. The main purpose of this one is to

create a compare page for users who looking for either

similar products or similar price

3. the navigation menu is also been changed. The main

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business activities are moved to the left side of the

promotional ads. And clients could browse the specific

product when mouse suspended on the main categories. This

is a supplementary function of the search engine. The

search engine is more focused based on the user’s

keywords, while this navigation menu is broader by

selecting the whole product category. We could also see

the promotion space in the left side. There are four ads

which shown in this area, which may interest consumers.

Unlike the previous content of the promotional banner,

the limitation of ads could let consumers know which one

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is most popular recently. While, another suggestion on

this banner is try to use some attractive and

straightforward words to draw browser’s attention. For

example ‘save up to 70%’, ‘hot tech buys’, ‘huge

discount’ all of them would works well due to consumer

behaviour.

The last suggestion is doing advertisements on other

website or search engine. Here, google adwords would be a

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good choice. By spending the certain amount of budget to

get the traffic to increase the visits is significant to

a new released online sales platform. The advantage of

the google adwords would be no time limitation and

location limitation. Besides, people in the world could

all see the ads by clicking; it is undeniable that it do

creates potential orders from other place rather Western

Australia.

Meanwhile, team digital have an outstanding reputation in

western Australia, thus, it could add some sponsor link

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in other webpage, for example, Perth local forum,.

facebook main page. This strategy is more focused on the

Western Australia. The potential benefits is that if

people feel unsecure, they could come to the real store

to either check or pick up which increase the

creditability as well.

Conclusion

Overall, this industry report gave a brief background of

the industry problem. Team digital, as a traditional

whole seller is facing challenges from all sides which

refer to bargaining power from suppliers & buyers,

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threats from new entrants and substitutions, and the

rivalry. Don, the manager of team digital started to take

strategic plan on the online-sales. Thus, he want to

improve the functions of the original website. After

talking with him, a brief web-analysis was given and some

strategic changes also be proposed. The main changes are

based on the consumers’ perspective; meanwhile, some

trend in the online-trading platform was also studied in

order to be more accurate. By adapting those changes,

team digital would experience the magic of the electronic

marketing.

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