Online Presence

Now that we have determined that moving into the online community is viable for us as a company, it is now time to continue the planning. We have discussed previously the strategic marketing tactics we will use and the way that we will use social media to ensure that we are ready to move forward. We will continue our planning and focus on the way that we will provide payment options for our customers. This will Include what tools they will use and how It will keep their information safe.We will also plan for ways to use search engines and how to gain optimization of their use. It will be vital to ensure that our name shows up in the result pages of the search engines. We will create a plan to reach the diverse culture that we live in, making our website accessible in a diverse consumer base. We will finish up by discussing our customer relationship management software that we will use on our website. Once these are finalized and decided on, we will be ready to move forward In the des ign phase of our website.This proposal will discuss and answer all of those questions and prepare us for design. AY . Customer Payments We are creating a website that will allow our customers to be able to accomplish al of the needed functions of obtaining a storage unit or REV parking without having to come on property. By doing this, we will need a payment option for our customers to be able to make payments for deposits or to make monthly payments. Our website Is designed to help our customers have the option of online payments to save them time and effort.Of course we will need an option for payment for our customers to use to order to be fully functional. We have looked at all of the options and have decided that the use if Papal would be the best option for us. We looked at having a shopping cart set up on the website to make payments. The majority of online stores work with a shopping cart and is very effective for their website that sells a larger variety products and servic es. The shopping cart allows the customers to store in their shopping cart those items they have want and to continue shopping for other things.Due to the limited number of items that we will be receiving payments for, an online shopping cart would not be necessary for us to achieve our goals. In making this choice on which payment options to use, we looked closely at ease f use for our customers and keeping their information safe and secure. Papal was chosen because of these considerations and ease of use for our customers. Papal will do all that we need it to do and is easy to use, free to set up, free for our customers. These features of Papal made it an ideal solution.Palsy's name and reputation was also a big consideration. A large amount of our customers have already used Papal, or at least will recognize the name. Having this knowledge of Papal will aide in helping them feel safe to use our online payment system. It will ink to our website and allow our customers to make paym ents without having to go to a different website to do this. The customers will click on that link, allow them to make the monthly payments or the one time deposit to hold their units.The Papal program also allows for the creation of invoices to allow for ease of use for our customers and also for the record keeping and bookkeeping needs. We can create invoices for them, send them out through email and then use Papal to accept their payments to that invoice. It will do all that we need to do in order for us to collect the needed payments. It will be great to have one tool that we can use to accomplish all of this. As far as the customers, the tools that they will use will simply be the website.It will connect them to Papal in order for them to make these payments. This will help us keep it simple for our customers. They will have the options to use their Papal account if they have one, or they can Just use their credit or debit card to make the payments. The will simply Just need to click on the buttons on the website. Papal also allows for the customers to set up reoccurring payments and not have to worry bout coming in each month to make payments. They can pay off of an invoice each month but is it not necessary.Some of the great things that Papal helps us accomplish and the main reasons for choosing this option are summarized below: Papal is the easiest way to set up e-commerce on our website There is no need for any licenses You can specify payment preferences working to keep us safe from fraud charges and have the best control over what kind of payments we accept There is easy encryption and the buttons are free No set up fees Ability to set up recurring payments Use of their invoicing system Ease of use for our customers AY: Search Engine Strategies: Search engine optimization is vital for the website and business.It is a very effective way for you to be able to create more business and more visits to your site. The goal of our website is to provide our customers an easy way of doing business Using search engine optimization will be the way that we will generate this new business. We are going to focus on the following to be able reach our search engine optimization and generate the most business from our website. Key Phrases: The first important strategy that we need to develop is that of our choice of key phrases. Key phrases are the most important and the very way that a customer will find us.As a customer puts key phrases into a search engine, that search engine will return those websites that are closest to those key phrases that have been put into the search engine. Search engines will return pages that have similar words and even account from some commonly misspelled words. This being said, we must be very careful in choosing the key phrases that will lead our customers to our page through these search engines. Eely, Tillie 2009) In working to find these key phrases we will use a free online tool designed to help discover ke ywords.This tool will do two things for us. It will search our website and suggest some key words and phrases for us and will also allow us to enter certain phrases we want and help us to create these key phrases. Once these have been created we can ensure that they are used in our content, which we will discuss later in the paper. We will be able to look at things such as similar words, commonly misspelled words, frequency of key words and how many other sites are targeting hose key words as well.With the nature of what our business is, we will focus on other local sites. Our competition is clearly only other local storage units in the area. Content that contains our keywords: Now that we will have our key words and phrases for the search engine we must make sure that our site contains these phrases. This will be our second strategy in optimizing the finality of our business. Content will be the most important part of our site and we need to ensure that our content contains our key phrases.This content is what provides the information for our customers. This information and content must be easy to read, follow and hold the customers interests. Other than that, it must send back the relevant signals to the search engine. The content is the key to ensure that our website is found in these searches. The key words and phrases are great, but if you do not find them in your content they are of no use. (Eely, Tillie 2009) In looking at the content of the site we need to play close attention to what types of pages we want to have.Placing the key words and phrases into these different pages will be vital to controlling where we place these key words in the site Even Hough the homepage is a very important page and must have a nice look and feel, the informational pages are where we will be placing most of the content and most of the key phrases. These pages will work to educate the consumers about our business and answer questions they may have such as prices and contr acts. Placing the key phrases are these pages will allow for a better search optimization.The use of these key phrases in the content of our social media sites will also be very important. In using these phrases there, our blob and Faceable page will also come up in the search engine results page. Design of the site: The next strategy that we will use to ensure the search optimization for our site is to take a close look at the actual design of the site. We want to have a site that is things but still work to use the design of the site as a way to optimize its search ability. In the design we need to pay close attention to things such as heading elements.The headings should include the key phrases due to the fact that the search engine spider uses these headlines to search the website for relevance. The headlines are also very important for our readers, it helps them to know where to go n the site to get the information they need. We also need to ensure that we look at the titles of our pages as well. The title of the pages is important for us to ensure a good search results ranking and allowing for click-through from the search engine results page. Whatever is contained in our title tags on each page, is what will show up on these search engine results page.We have to strategically choose the tile of these pages, not only for the search engines but also for ease of use for our customers and those who find our page. The more detail that we use in title, the better. It is vital that our key words appear in the first ten words of the title. (Stokes, 2013) Popularity and Linking: In our business, most of our competitor's websites will have the same content as ours. We have seen through our research that there are very little sites locally with as much content as we will have. It will still be important for us to stand out from among those other sites in the search results pages.One of the best ways to accomplish this is through the use of links, showing the popul arity of the site. When two sites have the same content, the search engine looks at the amount of links owing in from other sites to determine how it displays the results. The more incoming links that you have the higher your site will rank in the search engine results page. (Eely, Tillie, 2009) There are many different ways to have incoming links to your site. You can purchase them or you can use link exchanges with other relevant sites.We will be able to create some links to our sites to ensure popularity but doing some of the following: (Stokes, 2013) Commenting on relevant blobs, including the blob we will have and be linked too Submitting articles to other sites on packing and moving pips The use of social networking sites and links from pages Asking or answering questions on Yahoo Answers AY: Diverse Customer Base: When creating a website, one of the big factors that you need to consider is how you will make your site diverse in its approach so that you can reach out to all th ose members in your target audience.Reaching out to an international audience is a vital part of most websites who are selling products. Here at Pea's Rentals, all of the goods and services that we are selling are units and spaces that are fixed here locally and not something that someone can buy and have shipped to them. We will not have a large global presence in what we are selling and promoting. The majority of our customers are local and living in our immediate area. We may have some from out of state, or even out of the country, that are moving here that will need our services but the majority will be local people.That said, we do have a diverse culture that we need to cater to locally. In this discussion we will talk about ways that we can use our site to reach a diverse local group of people. We need to look at the business climate, the local culture and the infrastructure of our site to help us meet a diverse Due to the fact that we are a local company whose product and ser vices are local and really cannot be shipped or taken somewhere else, we are going to focus on how we can reach the diverse culture that we are in.It is vital that when we are planning the site that we ensure that we are reaching out to all of those that live among us. We will have several people that will be using the site to help plan their move to Utah and we need to ensure that we are able to relate our site to them as well. We will look at the content, language and overall culture of the site as we move try move award in our planning. Content is the most important thing that we will have on our website. It makes sense that if your content is bad then your website is bad.As we build the content of our site we must keep in mind not only our target audience but the diverseness of that audience. The content that we build on the site must be one that is simple and easy to use for all members of our target audience. We want to make sure that we are using words that are understood by the majority of people with varying degrees of education, learning and the English language. We must come across as knowledgeable and strong but with a content that is easy to follow and understand.One of the biggest mistakes that people make in our community in their content is assuming that everyone is a member of the Mormon Church. It has a very strong presence here yes, but assuming that and marketing to that is something that we have to be very careful about. Using words and phrases from their culture can be confusing and hard for others to understand. We cannot build our content around that specific local culture, we must build it around the world of meeting the storage needs of all the members of our community.Language is another consideration for us to take a close look at as we try to reach a diverse group of people. There is a very strong Hispanic culture here and we need to consider how we can cater to their needs on the site. We will have some PDF of our contracts and ot her information for our customers to look at and download from the site. These will be very helpful in the making the decision to use us for their storage needs. In order for us to reach this part of the community we will have these forms available for download in both English and Spanish.These downloads will notation a copy of the contracts, a price list of units and rules and regulations of the storage units. Having them in Spanish as well will help to ensure that our customers know and understand what is expected of them and what they can expect from us. It will also allow us to cater to them and make them aware that they are welcome here at Pea's Rentals. Utah is a very unique place and can be a bit overwhelming to new comers and even to those who may be outside of the Mormon culture that is so prevalent here.In doing our research we have seen that a lot of the sites here cater to that culture ND it can be a bit overwhelming. Even though it is a the dominate culture here in Utah County, we must be careful how we build the overall look and feel of the site to be open to all the different cultures and people who live here. We can accomplish this by ensuring that our content, pictures and wording is open to all cultures. This will be especially important for our customers who are coming in from out of state.We plan to use very neutral colors and landscape pictures on the site to give it the purpose, to sell units and make an easy site for our customers to use, it will help us o create a site that is open to all who want to use our services. AY: Customer Relationship Management: Customer relationship management is the key to all that we do. If we do not have our customers to rent our units or space we will not stay in business. They, of course, are our biggest stakeholders. It is vital that we do everything that we can to meet and even exceed their expectations.The internet has forever changed the way that people communicate with each other. It has also change d the way that we communicate with our customer and them with us. For most, it is easier to send an mail than it is to pick up the phone and call someone. Building a customer relationship management system into our site will be vital to ensure our continued growth and meeting expectations of our customers. (Stokes, 2013) We have previously discussed some of the tactics that we are going to use in marketing our product and service. These all fit right into our customer relationship management system.We have discussed the need to be a customer-centric company and use this marketing tactic to gain and keep our customers. Having a good customer relationship management program fits into this approach and helps s to maintain that vital tactic. It will allow our customers to share their thoughts, ask questions and make suggestions so that we know how they feel and what they need. Knowing this is the only way that we will be able to meet their needs and expectations. Some of our tactics and strategies that we have planned will fit in very nicely with our customer relationship management.We are planning to use email as our major way of communicating with our existing and our former customers. Privacy is very important to us and ensuring the privacy of our customers is of the most importance. We will only use email after permission has been given for us to do so. We are not going to sale emails or participate in buying emails. Even though this can be a great way to reach out to a large number of people at once, it can also lead to some negative marketing when potential customers become upset from your emails that we have not received permission to use.As we work to have and keep great relationships with our customers, we will have the chance to use them to spread our work and their experiences with others. They can be our biggest sales force. If we work hard to create a trusting relationship with them, they will feel better about commending us to their friends and famil y. Email is great but it can take some time for our customers to hear back from us. If they are looking for a quick answer to make a choice or have a question that they may need an answer to, we need a way to make that happen.This will be accomplished but the use of an instant messaging option on our website during business hours. This service will allow our customer and potential customers to reach us with their questions and have an instant answer. Our instant messaging system will be a customer initiated approach. If they want to talk to someone using this feature, we ill be there to talk and answer their questions. We will not use it to approach We have chosen to use the company again for our email and instant messaging needs. This software will allow for us to have our email and chat all in one place.We will receive email coming in from the website as well as the ability to chat live with our customers. The choice to use again was also made due to its ability to monitor our cus tomer satisfaction, trends and our social media efforts. With the help of this software we will be able to analyze where our customers are coming from and what resources are being used the most. We can see if email, social media, our newsletter and blobs are effective and how much business is generated by each of them. It will help us to put our efforts and resources into the most effective venue.On top of all of this is will give us the software to conduct our emails and chats and track and record them and where they were generated from. There is a cost of this software but it will more than pay for itself and has a high return on investment for us to be able to be most effective in our online approaches. There is an initial fee to by the product and then a monthly user's fee as well. The use of the software will be vital for us in accomplishing our goals or providing a website for our customer's needs as well as one that allows us to generate business.By the use of this software a nd the tactics and plans that we have we will be able to reach the people that we need to reach, be effective in our approach and add to our business using the right tools to get us to our goals. We are anticipating the return on investment for this software will be strong. It will more than pay for itself in the first six months of use. With all of this planning now in place for the development of our website, we are to ready to move forward and create the site.