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SWOT Template Organisation: RealEstate.com.au Date: 07/09/2017 |
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Description of current/new ICT service: Instant Customer Support (Chat Support; Toll Free number) RealEstate.com.au is a well-developed website supporting computer, Tablets and other mobile and smartphone device. The website offers a vast amount of information but lacks instant customer support which can be viewed as a negative aspect of the website. Instant customer support medium allows customers to contact the business immediately allowing for an instant constant which can increase the number of sales made by the business (Minutes, 2015). Many potential customers looking to invest in the property would like instant communication making it a basic requirement the business has failed to deliver and which may be incurring the business huge losses (Pahl & Richter, 2009). |
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STRENGTHS · Clear Navigation Dialog · Multi Device Support · Easily accessible Smartphone App · Simplified Property Search Bar · Fast loading time · Easy Registration Process |
WEAKNESSES · Lacks instant customer support Chat · No clear Toll Free number displayed · International markets hidden · Limited Company constant information · Tedious contact us process |
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OPPORTUNITIES · Develop live chat support · Offer Toll Free number · Display international reach · Access contact information easier · Reduce Data consuming Visual dialogue |
THREATS · Loss of Customers needing assistant to navigate · Inability to collect potential customer data · Loss of business to competitors offering easy to access communication · Loss of customer due to data consuming visuals · No Customer Reviews |
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Summary and Recommendations: On analysis of the RealEstate.com.au website, it is clear the business has invested a considerable among of capital on the encores interface. This is a very important requirement due to most people utilizing the internet to search for information and communicate with clients. Strengths: The business has offers a well-developed website with easy navigations and multi- device support. The company also offers smart phone app support helping speed up loading time and connecting the customer. Another befit observed on the website is the easy registration process where the customer only needs to provide their email and enter an alpha numeric password and an account is instantly created. This delivers instant access to the website allowing for business to connect with potential customers quickly and allowing Weaknesses: The business also has several weaknesses related to lack of instant and toll-free communication which limits customer access. The businesses physical address is also hidden which creates scepticism among customers who may want to note down and verify the businesses existence and also review previous customer comments before dealing with the business. Opportunities: the business has the infrastructure in place to develop live and toll-free support so as to access more customers. It should also display international reach and must reduce the visual content on the mobile interface to reduce data consumptions and increase the websites loading speed. Customers are growing impatient each day and want work to be done quickly Treats: Competitors are the biggest threat facing the business making it important for the business to focus on delivering high quality information and facilities to its customers. It is critical to evaluate and monitor facilities being offered by competitors to determine areas the business can improve so as retain customer confidence thus ensuring sustainability. Short Term (Now) It is critical to establish an instant customer support console on RealEstate.com.au. This console should be able to allow the customer to connect to support instantly so as to offer assistance on queries the customer may have. It is also important to provide a 1-800 toll-free number to establish communication immediately with the customer. The number should be clearly displayed on all pages and be interactive on the website thus ensuring it is visible to the customer at all time. The toll-free and support chat buttons should also be easy to access and be connected with the support team. Mid Term (next 12 months) RealEstate.com.au already has a well-established website portal which most of its customers access to avail the property investment, purchase and rental services. This makes it important to avoid disturbing the appearance of the website to suddenly which may affect customer’s perception and confidence. With visual images on the websites identified to consume a lot of band width and contributing towards slowing the websites, it is critical to remove the High definition images or develop a separate mobile friendly website. The remove or replacement of current images requires being gradual with back page images first being removed or replaced with low definition images. These processes should gradually be undertaken over a 12 month period to avoid shocking clients which may create panic and scare away existing clients. Change is important but must be gradual since many consumers view change as negative and may stop dealing with a brand or business if major changes to their portal or customer interface are made abruptly. This has been observed by several major global brands which registered a slowdown in sales due to changing logos abruptly which confused consumers and saw many withdraw till it was confirmed why the company had made the changes. Long Term (next 3 to 5 years) It is also important that RealEstate.com.au prepare to embrace future Information and Communication Technologies. The information’s and communications sector have registered major changes in the past decade and are expected to continue seeing some major developments in the future as well. Network-Based Telepathy, Hologram communication, Artificial intelligence Assisted Communication, and Instantaneous Translation are just some of the new forms of communication expected in the future. This makes it important for RealEstate.com.au to monitor the developing forms of communications and incorporate them into the websites current communication medium which would further increase the businesses reach to its customers. |
Information and Communication Technologies play an integral part towards any businesses smooth operations and growth. This makes it important for every business to focus its attention towards evaluating and putting in place an effective ICT service framework. The report shall focus on evaluating the ICT service framework (E-Business & E-Commerce Models and Strategies) utilized by RealEstate.com.au. This will help develop an effective action plan and which can be used towards developing E-Business & E-Commerce Models and Strategies which will benefit the business (TheStationeryOffice, 2002). E-Business & E-Commerce have become a basic form of communications used on a daily basis making it important for the businesses to develop effective Models and Strategies which evaluate the current E-Business & E-Commerce services and propose future models which can be used to further enhance
The world has experienced a digital revolution over the past decade whereby businesses and people have adopted digital communication to communicate as opposed to traditional forms of communication. Today postal services continue to be used only to send hard copies of formal paper work and parcels but businesses depend on e E-Business & E-Commerce Models and Strategies to conduct their daily operations (Chaffey, 2014). This has made it important for every business to develop a powerful E-Business & E-Commerce framework due to the majority of customers preferring to use e-business and e-commerce frameworks to perform their business operations.
Owning and maintaining a web developed website, Social media page and running e-commerce campaigns are basic requirements every business must have in place today to meet customer expectations. This is especially important for businesses like RealEstate.com.au due to customer preferring to use e-commerce platforms to locate basic information and data related to properties before considering physically visiting the property and making the final decision (Young, 2014).
In 90% of the situation, the customers will use their computer or smartphone to search for a property using key words on search engines like Google to narrow down the search for a property to a certain location. This makes it easier for the investor to locate suitable properties and dealers who have similar properties in a few seconds after which they contact the concerned individual. E-searches also help an investor secure a wider perspective related to available properties by allowing them to review more properties available and listed in a certain area thus delivering more option to choose from for the investor.
Unlike traditional methods of searching for service providers and suitable properties, investors are now able to search for relevant information on properties in a matter of seconds. Simply entering Key words like properties for sale Melbourne will yield a list of available properties and dealers which can then be narrowed down to one’s specific need. This helps investor locate suitable dealers and properties instantly and also allows the property owner to advertise their properties to potential customers in a matter in a matter of seconds without. E-businesses are key word sensitive which helps reduce the need for manpower thus helping reduce property related costs which help makes properties deal more affordable.
Another major benefit related to adopting E-Business & E-Commerce Models and Strategies is the platforms ability to deliver evenly distributed competitors among stake holders. Unlike the past when major players monopolized the market by purchasing all marketing media, E-Business & E-Commerce frameworks allow a business to adopt market their services and good directly to the customer using keywords. A businesses ranking is based on the keyword ranking which makes it important for the business to focus its attention more on business SEO, key word ranking, and social media marketing. This evenly distributes competition among seller and dealer which allows for each stake holder an opportunity to tap into the business opportunity and secure profit (Mehdi, 2013). It also works in the favour of smaller dealers as it allows the smaller dealer to present their services and good to the public on the same platform as multinational companies thus leaving it on the customer to make the final decision to deal with the brand or not.
To evaluate RealEstate.com.au in a better manner it is critical to perform an in-depth search RealEstate.com.au current statistics which deliver better understanding related to the websites current standings (Funabashi & Grzech, 2006). To release this information Alexa.com shall be used to evaluate the website which would deliver the basic statistics for the business and website thus allow for further analysis to be conducted.
Website Ranking
Figure 1- retrieved from Alexa.com
A search on alexa.com reveals that RealEstate.com.au is currently ranked 2203 globally and the website is ranked 28 in Australia. This is a relatively high ranking but the closer analysis of the website reveals the data reveals the website has been able to achieve a much higher ranking between January and April 2017. Having achieved higher rankings it is necessary for the business for the business to focus on its SEO efforts to improve ranking which will reflect and also increase the number of visitors to the website.
Website Audience
A geographical review of RealEstate.com.au helps reveal important information related to the location of the website’s visitors, bounce rate daily page views per visitor and average time spent on the website. It’s clearly by reviewing the data that the majority of site visitors are from Australia constituting to 88% of the total visitors to the website. Other country visitors who have shown interest towards the website include the USA, China, United Kingdom and India. This data can be used towards helping identify potential international investment markets which need to be prioritized in future thus allowing for better consumer exposure and reach. The data also displays the websites daily page views per visitor which I currently an average of 8.72 pages per visitor. Each visitor also spends around 10.34 minutes on the website searching through the different pages for new information and data. It is important for the business to focus on increasing the amount of time spent on the website which also increases the potential of making higher sales thus the SEO and website content management will also require being carefully re-evaluated to ensure it is up-to-date and meets customer’s needs.
Search Terms and Keywords
The Keyword and search data also plays an important role towards determining the search terms, key words, and websites responsible for generating traffic to RealEstate.com.au. 31.30% of the website’s visitors come from search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing where leading keywords such as real estate. Real estate.com.au, real estate, realestate.com, and realeststate.com.au.vic have been used. This has allowed the visitors to locate RealEstate.com.au via search engines which are an important source of traffic contributions to 31.30% of the websites total visitors. The remaining 68.70% may be visitors who find the website via social media websites and clients who have bookmarkers the website at their favourite thus visiting the website directly.
Sites Linked
In order for RealEstate.com.au to secure high ranking for its key words on search engines, it is important for the website to also focus on interlinking to other websites. This allows the visitors to the website to visit other recommended websites as well as have their visible links on other highly ranked websites which could help generate traffic and support keyword searches. As per the data, RealEstate.com.au is linked to 3596 websites each having a directly linked to the website but the website must continue increasing the number of links so as to increase the number of visitors from every possible source and increase its exposure and number of visitors which increases the possibility of securing more sales.
Areas of improvement
A closer review of Reviewing RealEstate.com.au helps identify important information related to the website which can be improved. While the website is well developed and has achieved a high ranking the website lakes some critical components of communication offered by competitors and other reputed websites (Schniederjans, Cao, & Triche, 2013). The website lacks a live support feature and no toll-free number has been clearly displayed which could have a negative effect on the businesses performance. This makes it important to consider infusing the two communication medium immediately to the website.
Live Support Chat
Live support has become a feature that is available on most websites today as it helps personalize and bring business employees and staff closer to the website visitors. In many situations, visitors will turn to live support immediately to secure support and assistance related to locating features and services. This helps speed up the service delivery which is an important requirement a business website must have and should be included to the website and portal. Live support also helps to collect important customer contact information such as email and contact number information which can later be used to establish communication with the client. It is important to understand many investors may lack the knowledge to navigate through a website thus offering support will help demonstrate a business’s efficiency towards catering to its client’s needs.
Many clients also require direct communication due to the inability to navigate through the website and offering a toll-free number will help encourage them to call the support team regarding their query. The toll-free number if very important as it helps collect direct contact information and established direct communication between the businesses and its website visitors which is likely to increase the chances of improving sales. This makes it mandatory for the toll-free number of being provided on the website immediately and ensures it is interactive thus always being displayed on the computer screen. It should also have a direct call button which helps speed up calling and also allow for a call back feature if required by the customer. It is critical to maximizing the number of ways in which potential customers can establish contact with the business thus increasing the number of leads which can be followed up on to increase sales.
E-Business & E-Commerce is heavily dependent on digital communication making it important to research, locate and use the latest communication medium. This makes it critical for RealEstate.com.au to research and identify the latest trends in communication being used by the web surfers and implement them to the website and smartphone application so as to maximize customer exposure being an e-commerce website, customers may also require to make online payments using their debit or credit cards which makes it important to provide a safe and secure e-commerce platform. This makes it important that the latest and most secure payment gateway is delivered to customers and their payment data is safely stored to avoid loss (Mohapatra, 2012). This is also important towards building the brands reputation and gaining customer trust making it critical requirement the business must fulfil while evaluating and managing its E-Business & E-Commerce Models and Strategies
Conclusion
With the internet being accessed and used by more people today it has become a necessity for businesses to put in place E-Business & E-Commerce facilities. In addition to setting up the facilities, the businesses must also be able to upgrade to the latest technologies as well as offer the most secure payment gateways. Management of e-commerce portals also plays an important role as it allows the business monitor and manages its e-commerce operations. This makes it important to also utilize online e-commerce and website analysis tools which would allow the business to secure its current status thus allowing the business develop effective strategies related to the future development and improvement plans.
References
Chaffey, D. (2014). Digital Business and E-Commerce Management. Pearson Education Limited.
Funabashi, M., & Grzech, A. (2006). Challenges of Expanding Internet: E-Commerce, E-Business, and E-Government. Springer.
Mehdi, K. (2013). E-Commerce for Organizational Development and Competitive Advantage. Hershey: IGI Global.
Minutes, 5. (2015). The SWOT Analysis: A key tool for developing your business strategy. 50MINUTES.COM.
Mohapatra, S. (2012). E-Commerce Strategy: Text and Cases. Odisha: Springer Science & Business Media.
Pahl, N., & Richter, A. (2009). Swot Analysis – Idea, Methodology and a Practical Approach. GRIN Verlag.
Schniederjans, M. J., Cao, Q., & Triche, J. H. (2013). E-Commerce Operations Management: Second Edition. London: World Scientific Publishing Company.
TheStationeryOffice. (2002). ICT Infrastructure Management. Norwich: The Stationery Office.
Young, T. (2014). Winning the Website War: Four Steps to Marketing Success. BookBaby.
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