Complexity of Online Strategies

You may claim that developing an online strategy for this site is like shooting flies with stinger missiles, but who've said an online strategy needs to be huge and complicated? No one claims that an online strategy needs to include a self service area as well as a full blown shop. Some might think about big complex things when they read the word "strategy", but think about it again. A strategy is just "A plan of action…intended to accomplish a specific goal" (see Dictionary.com) and nothing more. If your goal is to increase the number of visitors to your website, your strategy is basically just an explanation of how you will attempt to reach that goal. It could be as simple as "I’m going to launch five different AdWord campaigns, to get people to my site. I’ll continue to fine-tune the campaigns till I get a steady 500 users pr. Week. In the meantime I’ll use my tracking data to optimize my website, so that I won’t loose users during the ordering process"

Formulating an Online Strategy Can Be Easy

Why complicate things when they can be dealt with in a simple and easy manner? You can always expand or change your strategy once you have a better idea about what your site is capable off, and how you can use it as an integrated part of your business. If the strategy I’ve just mentioned has a vision of surpassing a physical store in total sales, the two goals I mentioned are naturally not enough. Once they’ve been reached, new goals should already have been set in place, e.g. reaching a conversion rate of 3% out of those 500 users pr. week and reaching a level of 1000 users pr. week within a set timeframe. Your vision should be fairly fixed (depending on the marked naturally) but your goals and strategies should be flexible. Online strategies can of cause be complex for companies like Amazon, Dell and Coca Cola, because their sites are so much a part of their business or brand-communication that they need to make it part of everything else. But there is no need to go from no strategy at all, to the full blown Amazon-size.

Keep Focusing on Your Online Strategy

You can definitely start small and grow slowly, as long as you have focus on it. I've seen a few companies who've launched a website (with or without e-commerce) and left it at that. They have no idea who their users are, how they behave on their website, and they don't seem to care either. That is the worst online strategy you can think of. If you choose to launch an online presence or e-commerce site, you need to have an idea about what you want to do with it, and how it is being used!