Virgin Books: an introduction to ecommerce issues

Written by: Jonathan Briggs

October 20, 2004 [3507 views]

This session is being run for Second Year students at Kingston studying Electronic Businesses Processes. The goal of the session is to look via a case study at the complexities of the business processes behind an online retailer.

Virgin Books is a book publisher and now an online bookseller. It publishes a wide range of titles including popular celebrity titles, business books, erotica and sport and music books. It sells online both its own titles (high margin) and those of other publishers (variable margins). It is part of the Virgin Group and provides special offers and discounts through other Virgin businesses including Virgin Credit Card, Virgin.com and Virgin’s staff discount scheme, Tribe.

the OTHER media has been working with Virgin Books since early 2003 to build, continuously improve and promote their book site. Since the site launched in April 2003 Virgin Books has seen a significant increase in its online sales (over those achieved by its previous site).

Outline

1. What technology components are employed in the case study and how are they connected?
2. What are the processes involved in managing and running Virgin Books or any similar retail business?
3. Why is integrating online retail with a real business harder than it might look?

Setting up an online store looks easy

• Some graphics
• A domain name
• A shopping cart
• Credit card payment system
• Some jiffy bags

Although it is possible to set up a store quickly and easily through a hosted service or using simple software these rarely support all the business processes in the organization.

It is really more complicated than that…
In each of these cases think about the technology and businesses processes that need to be put in place:

How will people know that you are there?
*Search engine optimized design
*Promotion and marketing
*Links with other companies

Why will people trust your shop?

• Branding
• Reputation
• Reliability
• Clear shopping process
• Clear statements on privacy, security
• High levels of customer service

How will products be packed and shipped?

• Who does fulfilment?
• What is involved with buying, storing, finding, packing and shipping?

Why will customers come back?

• Customer recognition
• Special offers for regular visitors
• Reminding people to come back
• High levels of customer service

How can you ensure that your online business matches your offline business?

• Common view of stock availability
• High levels of customer service
• Integrated returns policy

How will customers find products?

• Browsing
• Categorisation
• Search
• Navigation
• Clear design
• Search engine optimized design

How will stock availability be met?

• Just in time?
• Fulfilment partnerships

How will you ensure compliance with online trading laws?

• Can only sell what is in stock
• Need to conform to the Disabilities Discrimination Act on accessibility

How can you encourage people to buy?

• Promotions (2 for 1, free shipping)
• Up selling
• Good marketing

What happens when things go wrong?

• Customer service
• Returns
• Integrated offline/online
• Feedback
  !!Technologies

Databases

• Representing and storing core data
• products
• customers
• orders
• offers
• affliates

Software

• Modelling the business process
• Availability
• Credit card payment timing
• Confirmation
• Returns and credits
• Pre-ordering
• Split ordering

Designing technology infrastructure to be secure and scalable

• Databases
• Servers
• Networks
• Firewalls
• Intrusion detection
• Service level agreements

Working with B2B Partners

• Where a partner is used, communications mechanisms need to be established between the partners (messages will be passed using structure data formats such as XML)
• Stock
• Fulfilment
• Marketing including affiliates
• Shipping
• Payment

Design

• look and feel
• usability
• product classification and search
• browsing
• navigation

Visibility to search engines

• Titling
• Content
• In-bound links
• Metatags
• Simplified design

Cross platform issues

• Design compatibility
• Mobile?
• Accessibility and DDA compliance

Account holder tracking

• Cookies for recognition
• Customer accounts
• Affiliates
• Dynamic offers and pricing

Customer service

• Online
• Offline

Content management, reporting and shop management

• Pricing
• Offers
• Promotions
• Affiliates
• Return on Investment (ROI)

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