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ECommerce Plan

Location: AU

URL: www.wanderandponder.com WANDER And PONDER (W&P) is a brand new online magazine for creatively minded people. Content focuses on the intersection of four themes: travel, design, fashion and photography, which is contributed by specialists from each of these areas. Content is used to drive visitors to the site and then various W&P branded products are cross-sold. Word count: 1,995

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COMPETITOR AND MARKET RESEARCH 3 TARGET MARKET 3 ONLINE PROPOSITION 4 BUILD PLAN 5 E-COMMERCE SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE 5 BUILD 6 PEOPLE 7 TIMELINE 8 MARKETING 9 SEO/SEM ($7K) 9 MAINTENANCE 9 TWITTER 9 INSTAGRAM 10 PINTEREST 10 EMAIL ($3K) 11 DESIGN 12 MERCHANDISING 14 PRODUCT TESTING 14 LAUNCH PLAN 15 BUSINESS OBJECTIVES 16 MEASUREMENT 17 KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS 17 DASHBOARDS 17 OPTIMISATION 18 TESTING AND OPTIMISATION 19 APPENDIX 20

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Competitor and market research W&P face strong competition in the topics of fashion, photography, design, and travel, from both professional and amateur sites in each of these niches. As seen from some of the examples in appendix 1, there are thousands of lifestyle magazines that focus on similar intersections of content to that of W&P. There are also millions of blogs and online magazines about travel. The sites that prosper are those that: Focus on one niche audience and deliver great content Use great design and photography Project the bloggers/brands personality

Target Market Using these key learnings W&P will focus it's content on a niche set of travellers. These are serial travellers. They have visited at least 25+ countries and are aiming for 50. Travelling is more than a hobby to these people; it's a lifestyle. Serial travellers tend to be well educated, open-minded and successful. They share a passion for creative pursuits such as photography, fashion, and design, and are looking for high quality content from other bloggers. W&P will provide this service and be among the few sites aimed at this niche. Target Market Personas

Ashlea Wheeler Thirty-two year old Ashea loves exploring the world and photography. She maintains her own personal blog and is interested in design. She is currently blogging from her home in Australia.

Melissa Smith Thirty-year old Melissa Smith is a content-marketer for a larg advertising ]irm in NYC, and is also losing a battle to the travel bug! She has a passion for designer items sourced from around the world.

Jillian Kozak Thirty-nine year old Jillian describes herself as a world traveller and outdoor enthusiast. Jillian is fashion journalist and loves to dress colourfully as she travels. Jillian is livin' the dream from her home in Hawaii.

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Target Audience Criteria Sex: Female 60% male 40% Age: 25+60 Location: Worldwide Profession: Professionals, writers, bloggers, brand managers Psychographic: Travel is a lifestyle choice not a hobby. Online Behaviour: Continually researching and booking travel. Enjoys reading about the experiences of other travellers and comfortable with online shopping.

Online Proposition The aim of the site is two-fold. Part one - A place for bloggers to share their best work The site aims to attract guest contributors from around the world, to provide the sites content and photography. The site editor will then carefully curate submissions to the site and the best content will be shown. W&P will then credit the authors and link through to their own personal blogs (creating a win-win situation for both parties), and essentially acting as a portal of the best-curated travel, design, fashion and photography articles. Contributors can also market themselves as official W&P writers adding cache to both parties. Part-two - A content provider and product supplier for serial travellers Serial Travellers want W&P Response Well written and interesting content and photography Sourced from credible bloggers Combination of short and long posts Curated by the editor Travel inspiration How-to guides Products that complement their love for travel Travel products will tap into the mindset of the serial traveller mindset. For example: a trendy luggage case cover in the design of a world map with the quote: 'I havent been everywhere but its on my list'.

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Build plan

E-commerce System Architecture

ADSk

PPC (Google AdWords)

SOCIAL (Twitter, Instagram, FB,

Pinterest)

AFFILIATES (Click Bank)

OR

DER

-TAKING

WEBSITE (WordPress + Woo Commerce)

OR

DER

-PRO

CE

SSIN

G

FULFILMENT HOUSE (NP Fulfilment - AU)

MANUFACTURER Shenzhen Zhongguo Technology (CN)

DEL

IVER

Y / P

RO

FIT

BANK ACC (Commbank)

CUSTOMERS (Worldwide)

CREDIT CARD PROCESSOR (PayPal & eWay)

Managed by Freelancers (Freelancer.com)

24 hour shipping Track & Trace Returns Management Inventory Management Daily reporting

Fulfilment House orders product when agreed low threshold is reached

Returns & Chargebacks

Ships in bulk

Secure API integration with NP Fulfilment

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Build Daniel will manage the basic build of the site and the more advanced features will be outsourced. Domains and hosting

Domain names and hosting will be purchased through GoDaddy.com and Bluehost.com. Content Management

The site will be built on the WordPress platform and a premium website theme will be purchased and then customised for the Wander and Ponder brand. The premium theme purchased will feature responsive web design (RWD); ensuring the site is accessible from any device. Additional customisation, such as CSS and PHP will be completed through freelancers via Freelancer.com Contributors will submit articles and images via the sites contact page.

Payments Woo Commerce, who offers a simple WordPress plugin, will provide an ecommerce page layout and product management interface. Woo commerce then connects to NP Fulfilment (Australian fulfilment house) and eWay.com (Australian online credit card payments company) via a secure API.

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People Owner W&P will only have one full-time member of staff, owner: Daniel Corcoran. Daniel will project manage the operation, including the management of several freelancers and a range of contributors. Consultant Consulting regarding: marketing, strategy, finance, (and moral support), will be provided by Daniel's wife (Tanya) who brings over 10 years marketing experience earned at Nestl. Freelancers To keep the cost base low, freelancers will be used from overseas for specialist skills such as: design, online-product-maintenance, SEO/SEM and social media. Daniel will oversee the day-to-day management of these teams. Contributors Contributors will provide articles and photography. Daniel will ensure the tone and style of the brand is maintained acting as Content Editor. To reduce the amount of editing required by Daniel, all contributors are to be provided with style-guidelines. Manufacturing | Fulfilment | Payments The rest of the activities: manufacturing, fulfilment and payment will be outsourced to specialist providers and managed by Daniel. All outsourcers will be given written permission to communicate between themselves and solve inexpensive problems. The diagram below shows the tasks each person will perform within the W&P ecosystem

Daniel Corcoran Owner Content Editor HR IT Busiess Inteligence Product Sourcing

Tanya Gomes Consultant Marketing Finance Strategy Freelancers Design Content Social Marketing SEO/SEM

Contributors Article & Photography Production Content upload eWay Acc Mgr SSL Encyption Chargebacks

NP Acc Mgr Shipping & Handling Returns Management Inventory Management

SZT Acc mgr Product Supply Product Customisation/ Branding Shipping

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Timeline Below is a high level timeline of the major stages of the site in the first 15 months.

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Marketing With a limited start-up budget of just $10,000, advertising channels will need to be carefully tested.

SEO/SEM ($7K) Pages will be optimised for SEO through the code, titles, headers, body- copy and image tags. Google AdWords will be outsourced to a specialist provider via Freelancer.com. Initially, keyword groups will focus on attracting contributors, until a large enough contributor based is established. Next, Google's Keyword Analysis Tool will be used to find suitable keyword groups focused on the products.

Maintenance Daniel will oversee publishing new content and ensuring the tone and style is maintained. As the product suite (and profits) grow, a dedicated content manager will be hired (year 2).

Twitter

Twitter Content Strategy (using the 80/20 content rule) Eighty per cent of interactions with followers will be made through: tweets, retweets, replies and favourites. Twenty per cent of posts will promote products directly.

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Proposed Twitter Schedule: Day Theme Example. Monday Promotions 25% off W&P Camera Straps. Use the code: W&PCS25 Tuesday Behind-the-scenes Image of editor drinking coffee at desk reading travel magazines Wednesday Helpful tips 10 Ways to Sleep on a Long Haul Flights Thursday Customer spotlight Show a great review from the site Friday Industry News New Qantas routes Saturday Industry Spotlights Share news of a design show Sunday Focus on your people Highlight a travel bloggers latest post /show image

Instagram Instagram will feature high quality photography from contributors. Tactics used for gaining an engaged following include: High quality images posted around the four pillars of travel, design, fashion, and photography Commenting and liking other instagrammers' pictures Use of appropriate hashtags A well written and engaging profile Pinterest The target market is highly visual, therefore Pinterest will be utilised to build brand awareness and drive customers to the site. The Pinterest tactics will involve:

Posting the most desirable and well captured products Products will be mixed with other engaging content not supplied by W&P Separate boards will be created by popular themes that will resonate with the target audience

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Email ($3K) Capturing emails A free e-book of city guides will be used as a mechanism for capturing email addresses.

Regular updates Feedburner software from Google is used to generate email updates to everyone on the mailing list ensuring W&P remains top-of-mind. (See sample above). Product updates Campaign Monitor will then be used to design and send product emails, which will take advantage of peak seasonal times. To improve open and conversion rates, emails will be personalised in terms of subject lines and body text, and will use tactics such as scarcity (e.g. offer ends in 3 days), and social proof (e.g. most popular products this month). Email will also be designed responsively to ensure readability across all devices.

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Design It is crucial that the design is both appealing, accessible from any device and contributes to the conversion goals of the page. Stage one: build the visitor base Stage one will not feature any products and they key aims are to:

Engage readers with the high quality content Attract article contributors. Encourage email sign-ups The diagram below outlines homepage best practice to encourage repeat visitors and capture the email address of prospects.

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Stage two: grow visitors; earn ad income and cross-sell products When 2,000 UVs are achieved each month, a product section will be introduced to the site, as well as display advertising. This will be done in phases starting with a small inventory of products. The diagram below highlights the best practice techniques used to: Increase trust Reduce bounce rate Optimise page conversion.

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Merchandising Products will be sourced from a manufacturer in China, where wholesale costs are up to 70% lower than Australian counterparts. This will allow for a 14% net- profit margin on items. The product range will consist of items related to travel initially, and then the range will grow into designer furniture and eventually fashion. The first product range will feature items such camera straps, luggage covers and passport covers, that will feature the W&P logo along and interesting travel quotes. Product Testing Before wholesale terms are agreed, sample products will be sourced from Chinese manufacturers and sold through eBay, to gauge interest and to monitor the level of competition. Pending a successful test, a one-week site visit to China will be conducted to visit the manufacturers, inspect product quality, and to build relationships with suppliers.

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Launch Plan Below is an overview of the W&P launch plan including pre and post launch. Phase Task Due Date

PRE-LAUNCH Business Objectives 5/3/15 Competitor Analysis 10/3/15 Financials 15/3/15 Vendor Selection 30/4/15 Pre-launch meeting w/team 1/5/15

CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT

Storyboards 2/5/15 Wireframes 5/5/15 Design Concepts 10/5/15 Content Management 25/5/15

PRODUCTION Feature Definition 5/5/15 Content Calendar 10/5/15 Content Creation 25/5/15 Individual Page Design 10/5/15

Photography and Image Sourcing 12/5/15

Asset Preparation for Web 15/5/15 Data Migration 28/5/15 Data Entry 30/5/15

QUALITY ASSURANCE

QA Operations Identify, Prioritize, Report Ongoing

Approval for Launch POST LAUNCH

Procedure Definition 1/8/15

QA Operations Identify, Prioritize, Report 1/8/15

Lessons Learned 1/11/15

OPTIMIZATION A/B Testing 1/8/15 Running alongside the launch plan will be a QA checklist that will be used to log issues to ensure any bugs are captured and rectified before the launch.

URL Issue Summary Screenshot Status Notes

Font Styles Open

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Business Objectives Launch new site by June, 2015 Generate Net Sales of $41,100 by June, 2016 Achieve an industry-average site conversion of 3.04% Achieve an average order amount of $30 Target sales of 1,370 units Achieve a 14% profit margin on sales Below are projections of Unique Visitors (UV) by month and UVs by channel source to hit the Year 1 target.

0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 Unique Visitors by Month Target

Visitors

UVs, 21500, 48% UVs, 8500, 19%

UVs, 8000, 18% UVs, 7000, 15%

UVs by Channel Target

Organic AdWords Social Media Email

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Measurement Google Analytics will be installed and used to measure the sites performance versus the targets stated above. Analytics data will then be exported and tracked using the dashboard layout below. Key Performance Indicators Sales Marketing Customer Service Daily sales # Contributors Number of returns Average order size #Articles/photos Submitted Customer service email count Conversion rate Site traffic Concern classification UV vs. returning Social media followers PPC CTR

Dashboards Weekly conversion funnel Visits by channel Revenue, orders and average order value by week Marketing spend versus revenue

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Optimisation Tactics for conversion Conversion rate optimization (CRO) will be increased using the following tactics. Product Page 1. A spend stimulation offer is used to drive a larger average order size. 2. Worldwide delivery is clearly advertised to encourage purchases 3. Most popular payment logos are displayed to reduce cart abandonment rate 4. Saved items is used to increase the average order size and the shopping

bag amount provides important information for the user 5. Sort by options provide customers with quick options to find products 6. Price and a short description is shown to reduce clicks and therefore increase conversion 7. Images will be shown on a white background to accentuate the product features and design (tags will also be optimised for SEO) 8. Recommending what other customers have viewed provides social proof and is a strong method for cross-selling complementary products 9. A list of reasons to shop with W&P is used to build trust, and reduce risk for the user. E.g. 'Secure payment gateway'.

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Testing and optimisation A/B Testing Parts of the page will be isolated to check for improvements in conversion and then optimised based on the best performing design.

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Appendix Appendix 1: Competitor Examples The examples below all have strong online propositions and are well executed.

National Geographic The original travel magazine

12hrs features 12 hour city guides around travel, music and fashion

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Messy Nessy a look at Parisian life and host of other strange and wonderful world travel content

And North A guide about Upstate New York for Creative Individuals

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Manger Focused on Parisian food beautiful photography

eat this poem - Nicole Gulotta works with local writers to highlight the best bookstores, reading nooks, and restaurants for the traveling bookworm who has an appetite for both food and fiction

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The Traveling Light - Katie channels bliss, good vibes, and her love for nooks and crannies through fun, easy-to-read posts about special, secret spots in faraway places

Wearewestamerica The photography. The full life philosophy. And the high-five attitude.