Family Clothing Business Plan

Clearly defining the goals and plans for ReHabiliments’ website are important steps toward the company’s success.  Implementing a web presence as part of the company’s active marketing plan is critical to the visibility of the company in its local, regional, national, and global markets, and allows the company to inexpensively advertise its products and promote sales to a variety of “virtual” customers. 

The company’s corporate objectives for its website are:

• To provide current and potential customers, public relations, and media entities with an efficient, secure, interactive means by which to communicate with ReHabiliments and obtain relevant information about the Company, its mission, and its products.
• To provide customers with efficient, user-friendly, automated processes that allow them to easily browse the company’s products and to place orders for products through the website, thereby effectively reducing administrative costs associated with mailing product information.

ReHabiliments foresees its Internet presence as a tool that will allow the company to effectively manage its customers and their buying patterns and to track and manage corporate activities as they relate to different market opportunities.  Through the company’s website, ReHabiliments will be able to swiftly respond to sudden shifts in demand, new market trends, and changes in customer needs and demands.

6.1 Website Marketing Strategy

It is not enough for ReHabiliments to build a website and then expect customers to flood to the company’s new online presence.  Since the Internet is growing exponentially, ReHabiliments’ direct competitors are also vying for pole positions in their respective markets and doing their utmost to advertise and promote their sites to the Internet’s global audience.

ReHabiliments’ business strategy will lead the way in determining the company’s online objectives for promotion and development of the website.  The Internet and the technology behind it will provide business opportunities to create customer services and develop promotional opportunities that would be impossible in the “physical world.”

The company will rely upon a combination of offline and online methods to promote its website.  Offline methods include:

• Business Cards
• Printed company Materials
• Local Newspapers
• Presentations
• Conferences/Events/Seminars
• Radio/Television/Press/Cinema
• Internet/Web Journals

Online marketing methods include:

• Usenet Groups
• Reciprocal Links
• E-Mail Signatures
• Search Engines
• Web Directories
• company Specific Domain Name
• Portal Sites
• Banner Advertising
• E-Mail Marketing
• Online Competitions
• Affiliate Partnerships

ReHabiliments will ensure that the company’s website carries masses of useful product and company information that is not only interesting, but informative.  This will contribute to the customer’s overall experience of the website, as well as internally promote other sections of the site through relevant links that are strategically placed on the page and allow customers to “chase up” information.  For example, if ReHabiliments provides a series of web pages that describe the company’s products in detail, at the bottom of each page will be included a standard set of useful, follow-through hyperlinks, such as:

• Place an order with us now!
• Need detailed product information?
• Want to contact a salesperson?
• Read customer reviews on our products!

By investing time, effort, and money to maximize ReHabiliments’ business presence on the Internet, management can ensure that the company’s website effectively promotes its products and positively contributes towards the success of the company.  Build it, market it, and they will come.

6.2 Development Requirements

Realizing that every business is different, with different e-commerce needs, ReHabiliments has opted to contract out its web development services to ensure that the company’s final website meets specific e-commerce needs.  Once completed, the website will include:

• A Web hosting account.
• A registered domain name
• A secure SSL Certificate that allows the browser to create an encrypted connection to ReHabiliments’ website and the shopping system.
• The shopping cart system.
• A merchant account that is tied to ReHabiliments’ checking account and allows the company to accept credit card payments.
• Terminal software that allows ReHabiliments to process credit cards.
• A payment gateway account that allows ReHabiliments to take credit cards using automated processing and approval with the shopping cart.

Final development costs for the entire e-commerce website will range between $5,000 and $8,000 for a fully enabled, e-commerce website.