Advantages Of Creating An E-commerce Essay For A Clothing Boutique Selling To Far-Away Towns And Cities.

Three years ago, you became affiliated with a Quebec designer. She has developed a line that sells very well in your boutiques. It is a big hit. Your target market is young women between 15 and 20 years old, sporty, and who like to be in fashion. The clothes are comfortable and hip. The textiles used are those of athletic clothing, but each piece of clothing has an original cut. The clothes are made of stretchy material.î

Your prices are around $80 for a skirt, $90 for pants, and $60 for a top. Both of your boutiques are located on streets that are very well patronized by this clientele: the first is on St-Denis street, and the other on Ste-Catherine street. You do some advertising in Voir(a Montreal cultural newspaper) and in magazines like Clin d’œil, Elle Québecand Star inc.î

You would like to become known in other cities like Laval and Quebec City, and even in towns that are even further away from the large urban centres. This is why you are thinking about creating a website in order to get your name out and sell in other towns and cities where it is not easy to access your boutiques. î

Indicate whether or not it is a good idea to develop a website for selling your clothes to far-away towns and cities. î

If so, why? Describe how you would present your products. Also, describe your Web marketing strategy (would you use the same pricing, product, promotion and distribution strategy as your traditional marketing strategy?). Describe your strategy and how it differs from traditional marketing.î

If not, say why you would not do so, and what you would do to make yourself known through the Internet.

Development of a marketing strategy is a very challenging and demanding task. Managers face numerous challenges while creating a unique strategy that would enable them to provide a positional advantage in an effort for attaining superior customer and financial preference. The pecuniary success of a company greatly depends on the judicious marketing efforts and the other operational, financial, accounting and different business functions.

The main aim of this paper is to assess the advantages of developing a website for the selling of the clothes of a boutique to the far away towns and cities. The target market of the boutique is the young women who are sporty and the ones who like to be in fashion, belonging from the age range of 15 to 20 years. More precisely, they are from the upper class, elite families, as the prices of the clothes are around 80$ for a skirt, 90$ for the pants and 60$ for a top, which is quite expensive for the middle class and other lower class women to afford. Furthermore, the owner of the boutique now wants to become known in other cities like Quebec and Laval. Although she does some advertising about her boutique in Voir and in magazines such as Star Inc., Elle Quebec and Clin d’ceil, she wants to adopt some more effective marketing and branding strategies for its products to get familiar in new market boundaries. This paper is going to shed light on indicating whether or not it is a good idea to develop a website for selling the clothes to new cities and towns. It would also examine how she would present its products in the market. Furthermore, it shall elaborate on describing the Website marketing strategy as well. Lastly, how the strategy is different from that of traditional marketing would be examined.

The owner has chosen to develop a website for selling the clothes to far-away towns and cities. The benefits that she would likely generate from this are mentioned below:

a) Firstly, it would keep the customers on the website. Having one’s own e-commerce website is very important when it comes to the question of customer acquisition. He or she can take the business to an entire next level once they establish loyal customer base and start having new customers or users visiting on the website on regular basis. When the potential customers visit the website, they can only buy the products. It is the brand or the brand itself that could convert these users into potential customers and finally make them seek for returning the website again and again. When a company want to use marketplace for selling its products and services, there is a high competition. Hence, it becomes very difficult to get the products featured.

Place

There are several sellers on the market place sites with absolutely same or somewhat similar to the products that the brand itself is trying to sell. Hence, the only way for getting the attention of the customers is by creating a unique descriptions, putting hires pictures and many more. However, if in case the products are not the cheapest of all, it would not give the business a certain that he could sell anything in the market. The competition in the business environment is very intense. One need to cope up with very frequent change in the product price and launch of identical or similar products like his own. Hence, it is very hard to stand out.

b) Secondly, selling the clothes directly through website would give the brand a more trustworthy and more professional brand image. A website that is well-designed with simplified process of purchasing and has great navigation system would do wonders for the business. Building a personal brand is much more effective with one’s own e-commerce website. The customers take the business much more seriously and also, it is quite easier for them to recognise and remember the brand name. This in turn increases brand recognition among the customers as well.

c) Thirdly, selling through the websites also gives the owner complete control over his business at each stage and therefore, they are entirely subject to any difficult happenings. One could change the prices of the products anytime and also, could create their own selling scenarios as well. Furthermore, it also gives the business full freedom for personalising the website according to his own needs and requirements. He could add his own descriptions for the items, price tags, designs and give the business a personal touch which makes the brand stand out from its other potential competitors. One can create some unique customer experience which comes with a sense of believe and trust. They can control the design, content as well as the display of the products in right manner. All these greatly increase the chance of attracting more and more customers towards the brand.

d) Fourthly, It helps in increasing the customer base. Making use of one’s own website for selling the products provides the business owner to access of the date of the customers. He can analyse their behaviour in right way and could also react to them quickly in order to help them in completing the process of buying effectively. In this way, they can even send the customers emails with some personalised offers and by generating more sales. It is really a good way for increasing the value of customer lifeline.

Promotion

The boutique would be a new brand for the far away towns and cities. It would distinctively define itself and translate well in its product portfolio as well as in the visual communication all through its different touch points- rights from its website to its packaging of the products. However, it is to mention that the boutique would position itself as a premium brand that targets young women who are sporty and the ones who like to be in fashion, belonging from the age range of 15 to 20 years.

It would not give too many choices to its customers. Its price range is set as per the economic condition of the place. For its premium products, it would not provide endless number of choices. It would provide very fewer choices, particularly at the time of the initial launch. The price range of the clothes are around 80$ for a skirt, 90$ for the pants and 60$ for a top, which is quite expensive for the middle class and other lower class women to afford. This is due to the fact that in order to be perceived as a premium brand by the customers, one should have fewer choices to avail. Having more choices makes the decisions making of buying the product more challenging for the customers. Hence, it would be better to launch the product with a single price and that too, with lesser options.

1. Ensuring the targeted advertising by means of PPC (Pay-Per-Click). It is considered to be the most effective web marketing strategies which enable well-targeted advertising. It also ensure the promotions of the products directly before the elusive prospects at right time. It gives more control over the web marketing campaigns and promote the landing pages in targeted way. Moreover, it would help the owner of the boutique to send more targeted texts to the website visitors as well.
2. The Social media marketing on the web would be used as an approach for getting before the groups of the prospects who are talking regarding the subjects that are been identified with the clothes and services of the boutique. It is believed to be one of the best approach for getting in front of the potential customers through internet and enable the generations of the leads as well. It is to note that, it would make use of Facebook and Instagram.
3. Moreover, it would use “Google Alerts” for discovering the online talks and for the blog entries that are identified with the brands. This would permit the customers to give great inputs on such topics. The firm could also use this Google Alerts for posting links back to its website and the landing pages.
4. It would have blogs and newsletter for connecting with the already prevailing and the potential future customers. These blogs would cover the brand as well as the product specific news that are aimed towards informing and communicating with the customers.
5. Guest blogging or guest posting shall be incorporated as well. This would drive the referral traffic to the website of the boutique and also the boutique manager could link those guest post with the relevant pieces of content on the website. Moreover, it would also help in building strong relationships within the industry and would ensure excellent brand exposure.

The web marketing strategy would ensure two-way conversation, while the traditional one enable only one-way conversation. Web marketing is not just about advertising, it is a significant tool for creating brand awareness among the customers as well as for developing attitudes regarding the brand in their mind, instead of just promoting their purchase. Web marketing fills the top of the funnel on the basis of both the content as well as the shared content from the other people. Rather than bashing the people over the head along with the slick advertising copy, the main aim of the boutique would be using “advertainment” that embeds the corporate messages within the entertainment. The traditional media also make use of advertisement that comprise of much of its success. The advertising is embedded within the radio, television and the print content which the customers really enjoy. It is the advertising, which makes all these options of entertainment free and delivered at lower cost to the potential customers. But the digital ones is already free of cost. Furthermore, website is paid, owned and earned. On the other hand, traditional marketing is just paid. Website marketing is uses a data driven approach. Data plays a very crucial role. The markers have all the control over the target customers, in this case the fashionable young women. This in turn ensures focused marketing and at the same time, it provides a much better chance of getting real good Return on Investment (ROI).

Conclusion

Hence from the above analysis it is to state that there are several advantages that the boutique would get after selling the clothes through online websites to the far away towns and cities. For customer acquisition having effective e-commerce website is very important. It is also to mention that marketing is all about focusing on the strategies that are concerned with a critical decision of the market definition and segmentation as well as the identification of the potential basis for the differentiation. The above mentioned strategy for the boutique to market its products in new geographic location is highly effective in increasing its brand awareness and profitability in the new market.

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