Assignment 1: E-Commerce - Task 3

Client Brief

You work in an electrical re-seller and you are considering starting a website.

You have been approached by management to find out about selling on E-commerce and the advantages and disadvantages to doing business online.

The company’s main sales comes from TV systems, but they sell large electrical items like Fridges and Freezers, HIFI systems and most recently they stock game consoles and games. Also they have a specialist photographic department that sell cameras and accessories.

This assignment is split into several tasks that you need to work through step by step. You will need to choose appropriate format and presentation methods for the audience.

The current structure of the business is:

MD – Managing director of business, works in office near their business.

HRM – Human resources manager.

HRA – Human resources  administrator.

SM – Sales Managers, who works in shop floor or in main office with MD.

SP – Sales persons, who work on shop floor.

A – General admin staff who help sales staff.

PS – Photo specialists (Sell and are photography experts) – Work in Photoshop located next to main building.

                                                                                                                                                  
In a Word Document write about:

What's your potential market for your goods online?

Look at other competitors and evaluate their online/traditional businesses and how they link them together (Or not). Give three examples of competitors and compare online to traditional sides of the business.

What's the cost of setting up an E-commerce side of the business; list everything that would be needed to be set-up and an estimate of cost that would be incurred.

Work should be well structured and presented. Should show that you have your own thoughts and processed the research and come up with original thoughts and ideas for the subject.
                                                                                                                                                  

The potential market for my goods online are a people older than 18 and younger than 50. There are also people who are attracted to gadgets and wish to buy them. My business will attract more customers because it will both sell and buy products so that customers can sell there products to us and we can sell it too someone else assuming it still works.
One of the potential markets is gamers because of the fact that they could easily buy and sell games at a reasonable price, they would also be able to buy a console if they needed one. This is a good market because the amount of gamers world wide is 1.8 billion people and 56% of gamers own a console so that would make a potential market of people who would buy a console be 910 million people.

All of my competitors are online businesses. Three of my competitors can exchange goods for money, the only exception is Currys which doesn't do this because the are a business that exist world wide so they don't need to do this to get new electronic goods, whereas Cash Shop often sells the products for profit. Out of the four competitors only one of the stores is online only which is online only is GadgetXChange it doesn't have a store front at all. Out of the three competitors that have a store front Currys is the online that has employees that actively help out customers by explaining everything about the product that the customer wants to buy and they have a long time customer warranty so that if any of the products that a customer buys stop working they will be able to get a refund or be able to fix it for the customer. Currys also sells a lot more electronic devices like a lot of kitchen appliances that would attract a bigger customer base so they can sell more products. Out of all of the competitors only Cash Shop allows you to exchange foreign currency for currency that can be used so that business is more inclusive to people from foreign countries. 
Some of the negative points about Cash Shop is that it relies too much upon reselling used products and also the fact that there isn't a warranty for the products they sell. Some of the negative points about CeX is that it only sells movies, games, games consoles, phones, chargers and accessories for phones and games consoles which means they do not sell other electronic devices like TVs, fridges, freezers or microwaves which could be sold to make more money for them. Some of the negative points about GadgetXChange is that it doesn't have a offline store front which means that people can't 

Currys - PC World
CeX/UK.Webuy
GadgetXChange
Cash Shop

The cost of setting up an E-Commerce side of business would be around £2500 to £3500 to set up a basic E-Commerce website with a standard design, £4000 to £7000 to set up a customised E-Commerce website and £10000 to £50000 to set up a customised enterprise E-Commerce website. 
The cost of registering a domain name £4 to £53. 
The cost of getting an SSL Certificate would be £35. 
The cost of website hosting cost between £6 to £13 a mouth. 
The E-Commerce platform costs between £70 a mouth. 
The internet secure merchant account costs between £950 to £990. 
The cost of PCI Security Standard Council is between £3500 to £7000. 
The Bespoke Software cost between £10000 to £50000. 
The cheap SEO cost is £50 a month. 
The mid level SEO cost is £500 to £1500 per mouth and £2000 to £4000 set up cost. 
The high level SEO cost is £1500 to £10000 per mouth and £10000 set up cost. 
Overall, at the minimum, it would cost £19565 to setup an E-Commerce website. 
Overall, at the maximum, it would cost £113671 to setup an E-Commerce website.

Overall I think that the minimum cost setup would be the option I would use because of the fact

References

How to set up an E-Commerce Website
https://www.freshegg.co.uk/blog/web-development/getting-started-with-e-commerce

Internet Secure Merchant Account Cost
https://merchantmachine.co.uk/compare/

PCI Security Standard Council Cost
https://www.stickman.com.au/pci-dss-compliance-cost/

SEO Cost
https://www.noisylittlemonkey.com/blog/average-seo-costs-in-the-uk