http://www.playle.com/ also provides a channel for sellers to sell off their second hand CDs and other items for;
BUYERS: You can always find a wide variety of items to meet your musical taste. See for yourself the great music you can get at great prices,
SELLERS: You can auction your unwanted music items here today and earn extra
BACKGROUND TO CHOICE OF SERVICE
http://www.playle.com/ offers a special dealer setup package for dealers (seller) who wish to own a customized browse page that displays only their items such as postcards. stamps, antique and collectables at a low fee for only one cents. http://www.playle.com/ adopts a business model similar to ebays business model fee for transaction service which lowers the risks and costs of setting up an auction site, dealers only need to pay for fees per transaction instead of paying a full monthly subscription.
Playle ensures the satisfaction of their customers by offering made to order websites through matching their customers wants & needs. Dealers can also choose the auction closing date (up to 60 days long) charged at a low monthly dealer fee compared to other competitors
Strength of the site
- Text can be read
- Short and simple forms
- No bugs, typos, or corrupted data, no outdated content.
- Have a navigation bar immediately apparent. These way visitors to the site have an idea of the kinds of things that have on the site.
Weaknesses and Solutions
- No content that answers visitor questions (FAQ)
- Search bar missing from the website
- Don't put any giant images on the page. Make everything small and simple, so the page loads faster and visitor can see clearly the CD coverage.
- buyers finds it an hussle with the need to register first before they make a purchase
Analysis of Business Model
A business model led a business to rapid sales growth and market dominance and describes how a business positions itself within the value chain of its industry and how it intends to sustain itself to generate revenue. The traditional model that http://www.playle.com/ is using will not be able to sustain the company on the long run. it can be improved using the revenue models listed below to enhance its competitiveness in the global electronic market place. Therefore i will recommend the owner 3 changes on its current website with an integration of;
· Advertisement supported Web-portals
· Advertisement subscription revenue model
· Affiliated marketing strategy
Advertisement supported web-portals:
The company should sell spaces to advertisers to generate revenues. Search engine and web directories such as yahoo and google were also selling advertising to generate revenue. The new sites that emerged still used an advertising-online revenue generation model and included all the features offered by community sites, search engines sites , web directories and other information providing and entertainment sites.
Advertising-Subscription Mixed Revenue Model
I personally recommend this website to use advertising-subscription model. This model has been very popular for several years in newspaper and magazines. It is designed to obtain up-front payments from customers for access to specific services or content. Subscription fees are usually billed monthly. The subscription model attracts customers with services that enable them to maintain continuous contact with the company. While we doing advertising, we also need to identify some problems that we may face.
Web advertising has been hampered by:
- Identifying Some measurements do exist, e.g. number of visitors, number of unique visitors, and the number of click through, however it is difficult to develop a standard
- The key is to make a sticky Web site (the ability to attract new and repeat visitors to a Web site) because visitors will be exposed to more advertisements.
- Few Websites have sufficient visitors to attract large advertisers
- Most successful advertising is targeted at specific groups based on demographics, e.g. address, age, gender, income level, type of job, hobbies and religion (due to privacy issues more and more people are unwilling to give this information).
Advertisement supported revenue model
Advertising-supported software is a unique and viable business model in which software developers can make money without requiring the end-user to pay for the software. However adware may come as no surprise uses the 'Net connection to download ads, we need to concerned about the large amounts of data may flowing in the other direction. Several adware applications have been known to secretly snoop around areas of your computer they don't belong, including your browser history. Ad-supported may be driven by any number of groups internal or external to the host venues themselves. For non-retail networks, like auction site, the biggest benefits come from advertising complementary (non-competitive) products and services that can promote future business as well. Consider a restaurant network that carries ads for a nearby movie theater, complete with trailers and upcoming showtimes. Customers might go to the movie and return to the restaurant afterwards for dessert, helping drive sales for both of the businesses -- especially if a specific promotional offer is included in the ad.
The biggest risk in the case of ad-supported networks is that our site won't be able to sell enough advertising to cover the cost of the hardware, software, and ongoing operations of the network. Also, even once we have them signed up, advertisers can be a fickle lot, so it is recommend to keep as much information about our network as possible (in the form of playback logs, traffic logs, etc.) to prove its value when it comes time to negotiate (or renegotiate) contracts. Bring in some expertise, through hiring, partnerships or acquisitions, it will increase the chances for success.
Affiliate marketing is a method of promoting web businesses (merchants/advertisers) in which an affiliate (publisher) is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber, customer, and/or sale provided through his/her efforts. Affiliate marketing is also the name of the industry where a number of different types of companies and individuals are performing this form of Internet marketing. In order to increase our profits, we must turn our customers into repeat customers. Affiliate programs are an excellent way to increase traffic to our web site and increase our profits. The benefits of affiliate marketing include the potential of automating the advertising process and immediate payments from customers, including the revenue shared between affiliates. Affiliate marketing has made it possible for millions of people to successfully operate their own home business. Affiliate marketing gives an effective and powerful network. It can effectively drive paying customers to our web site with a network of affiliate sites that have a direct incentive in helping us sell our product or service.
Compared to traditional advertising methods, affiliate programs are highly effective and cost efficient. A smart marketing strategy and effective sales techniques earn affiliate marketers large sums of money with little effort. Each time we make a sale to a customer who clicked on our banner, our affiliate partner also makes money. When our affiliate partners get paid through the use of our banner, they have a great incentive to keep our banner on their web site. We can operate a highly successful Internet home business with the help of a large network of affiliate partners. The benefits of affiliate marketing not only include inexpensive advertising, but increased profits for all involved. There is virtually no risk involved in affiliate marketing. No upfront costs and little effort make running an affiliate program very attractive. Affiliate programs are one the best ways to draw traffic to your web site. Offering a quality product and excellent customer service will keep customers returning to our web site again and again.
Affiliate Marketing Strategies
Affiliate programs are the ideal way to make our web site profitable. In affiliate marketing one firms website the affiliates firms includes descriptions, reviews, rating or other information about a product that is linked to another firms site that offer the item for sale for every visitor who follows a link from the affiliates site to the sellers site, the affiliate site receives a commission. The affiliate site also obtains the benefit of the selling sits brand in exchange for the referral. A strategic alliance is acheived when two or more companies join forces done thru joint websites using channel distribution manners
Why use integrated revenue models?
The principle of using revenue models is to identify strategically the Consumers desires and to generate sales so that focus can be made to market to those consumers . Using Revenue models helps to
· Increase sales
· Reduce costs
· Increase customer satisfaction
· creates an alternative channel of revenue
Improved security also plays significant helps to protect and prevent phasing and theft of confidential information, trusted certificates (logos) boots confidence to consumers to purchase online and that their information are safe with the security features of the website Web advertisements is used as a tool to collect usage data, logs and analyses it (e.g. trial visits, page view , time of stay) using Click streams to identify information about its visitors automatically log it into the data base management system (DBMS). Raw data can then be transformed into useful information using OLAP for organizational members and partners (e.g. suppliers) for planning purposes. Firms can obtain detailed information about a customer's behavior, buying pattern with accuracy and use it to set prices after he implementation Optimum objective is achieving web presence
The improvement on the website would be able to attract more people to the site and create more stickiness to the website than its previous look. On the other hand the owner can also use google adwords so as to divert more traffics to its website. The higher the traffic and usability , the higher the chances of selling an item.
How to Attract visitors to the website???
- Making the website interesting enough that visitors stay and explore (stickiness) Convincing visitors to follow the sites links to obtain information
- Creating an impression consistent with the organizations desired image
- Building a trusting relationship with visitors (e-crm)
- use icons or images to make the page more interactie
