E business and e-Commerce: Business Plan
Phase One - Identification

The World Wide Web is a vast virtual space, and one of the growing segments of the Internet world is e business and e-Commerce. Just about anyone can start an online business, and if you have ever searched for a product on the web you know exactly what I’m talking about. There are thousands of e business and e-Commerce stores out there to sell you just about anything you could ever want.

The reason there are so many online business owners is that e business and e-Commerce websites are fairly easy to set up and maintain, and there are plenty of services available to help get you started and keep your business up and running. But before you decide to jump in the ring as an online merchant, it is best to put together an e business plan to guide you through the process.

The first element of an e business and e-Commerce plan is to develop your businesses identification. This is more than just coming up with the name of your business. Part of this means what you are going to sell. Are you going to be the provider of a vast array of products, or are you going to specialize in a product niche? Perhaps you already own a store somewhere and you want to branch out to offer your products online. Whatever the case, it is important to define the scope of what you will sell. This will not only help you get started, but it will be important in other phases of your online business plan.

Another factor that your choice of product will have an impact on is the amount of inventory you must maintain in order to provide fast shipping to your customers. If you don’t have a lot of room for inventory, you may have to keep the number of different items you sell scaled back.

Once you decide what your product or products will be, the next step of an e business and e-Commerce identification phase is to define your target audience. Will you be selling supplies for a particular recreation or hobby? If so, then your target audience will be those people who are involved in that activity. Or perhaps you are going to sell a much wider variety of products. In that case, your target audience will be much broader in scope. What this information tells is where your potential customers will come from and so that you can develop your online store to reach as many of these people as possible. In order to sell your product to your customers you have to know who they are and how to attract them to your site.

These few simple elements will set your e business and e-Commerce online store on the right track. They ask the basic questions you will need in order to identify your product and target market, which will in turn provide the necessary information to begin developing the rest of your business plan.