Children's Website Business Plan

InteliChild will be offering a steadily increasing mix of three lines of products:

1. Toys and Games: carefully selected toys and games that appeal to the target market, the parents of the target market, and educators.
2. Books: there should be a selection of books that appeal specifically to the parents and educators of the target market, so that these interested adults can go to this site and order books about their children.  In addition, of course there is also a selection of books to be ordered by and for the kids to read.
3. Software: carefully selected software to appeal to the target market and target parents and educators.

Product Description

In the original plan this is a detailed description of the specific toys and games, books, and software that are included on the website.  This level of detail was considered proprietary and was removed from the plan for purposes of illustration.  If you are using this sample plan as an example, then insert here a detailed list of your own products for your own plan.

Competitive Comparison

In the original plan this is a detailed description of and analysis of other channels and sources from which the target market and parents and educators can purchase toys, games, books, and software.  It describes in general some kinds of toy shops, and then specifically some catalog and web businesses that appeal to this audience.

This level of detail was considered proprietary and was removed from the plan for purposes of illustration.  If you are using this sample plan as an example, then insert here a detailed description of your competitors for your plan.

Sales Literature

Our answer to sales literature is the web.  Within six months we should also have a printed catalog that we can send to people to go along with the Web purchasing process, because some buyers will want to refer to a hard-copy catalog. 

Sourcing

In the real plan this section referred in detail to distributors and products they carried.  This detail was considered proprietary and strategic, and was omitted from the sample plan for purposes of illustration. If you are using this plan as an example, then in this section you should have detailed discussion of how the products to be sold can be purchased from manufacturers and distributors.

Technology

The InteliChild.com e-commerce site will be built on a three-tier structure. Driven by SQL™ servers and an IIS™ Web server backed with bandwidth, the site will be coded mostly in ColdFusion™ and ASP™. We will be taking our registration databases live to be able to email updates on products and the website to customers. We will offer customers the option to take themselves out of the list.

The information architecture will be based on four fundamental arenas – the free valuable information arena, the product detail arena, the final purchasing arena, and the purchase administration area.

The purchase arena will require a Verisign™ certificate and a Cybercash™ connection. That will begin immediately because dealing with Cybercash™ can sometimes be a lengthy process.

The administrative arena will be hosted on mirror servers that query to the live databases for migration into local databases. This server is hidden from Internet traffic and kept under high security even within the company.

The entire set-up will be somewhat costly. We will need five servers, two for in-house reasons, and three for Web hosting reasons. Two of the Web host servers will be serving traffic through ColdFusion™ and ASP™ in cluster, and the third will be a dedicated SQL™ server.

Future Products

The Internet reinvents itself every three months, or even faster. Our strategy for future development is to remain positioned with enough flexibility to adapt new technologies, and adapt to changes quickly.