#1 – BUSINESS MODEL
Coffee Lab is a B2B and B2C e-tailer and e-distributor that sells high quality, identifiable, fresh coffee beans with guaranteed 2-day delivery so you can enjoy the best coffee immediately.
Value Proposition: Our customers are coffee connoisseurs who won’t settle for anything less than the best. Coffee Lab offers Arabica beans sourced from all over the world. Single origin coffee beans so you know exactly what country, farm or variety you are purchasing. Stamped roast dates and one-way valved bags ensure you receive fresh coffee beans without any compromise.
REVENUE MODEL: Coffee Lab will generate its revenue primarily via internet sales and subscription model.
Market Opportunity: The market opportunity for Coffee Lab is within a segment of the bean market catering to customers who desire best in class, single origin coffee beans. This customer places value on quality over price.
Competitive Environment: There are numerous coffee bean companies offering single origin beans. There is no one leader in the market and most of the companies are fighting for their piece of the pie. The companies that do better have good relationships with café’s and wholesalers, strong brand awareness and receive excellent write ups from reviewers.
Competitive Advantage: While other companies offer quality, single origin beans, Coffee Lab is unique in guaranteeing free 2-day shipping (after roasting occurs) for subscription customers.
Market Strategy: Coffee Lab will primarily sell its products via website and drive awareness with local-market campaigns, incorporating relationships through social media campaigns as well as hosting events for bloggers/editors and up and coming restaurants/cafes.
Org Development: As a start-up Coffee Lab’s current needs are to launch a team of hands-on proactive individuals that can wear many hats. Our team consists of a founder/owner, Operations Manager and Sales Manager. The owner is responsible for marketing strategy, building business relationships, driving awareness and sourcing the products. This person also does all the roasting. The Operations Manager is responsible for managing inventory, shipping, accounting/payroll and any systems (including website) required to keep the business running smoothly. The Sales Manager handles all customer service needs including relationships with direct and wholesale customers, invoicing and sales forecasting. As the business grows, the current team will need to strategize and manage more of the business therefore needing to hire teams that can handle the tactical side of their current roles.
Management Team: The team consists of the current three individuals doing all of the work in the start-up. Partnerships and future distribution plans may require investments from outside the team possibly changing current leadership and their roles.
#2 – UNIQUE FEATURES OF E-COMMERCE TECHNOLOGY FOR SUCCESS
The value of e-commerce technology is that it provides a quick and easy way for customers to learn about Coffee Lab’s products and subsequently purchase with just a couple of clicks. The registration model allows returning customers to receive product regularly and a registration feature saves customer info for a simple and convenient shopping experience.
#3 – OBJECTIVES AND FUNCTIONALITY OF COFFEE LAB WEBSITE
Key objectives for Coffee Lab’s website:
- Provide visitors with an extremely positive first impression of the site. This will be accomplished by using eye-catching graphics and driving the message of what we offer to the visitor on first glance. The landing page will be noticeable, draw you in, but stay simple.
- No matter where you go on the site, the message/theme and brand is maintained. Functionality is consistent and the pages feel related to each other.
- Ease of purchase in multiple areas and enough information to make customers feel like they can buy products quickly and confidently.
#4- GRAPH DEPICTING BASIC SITE MAP FOR THE COFFEE LAB
PLEASE VISIT OUR WEBSITE AT
HTTP://DOTTIE-PLOUFFE.MYSHOPIFY.COM/
Hypothetical URL: thecoffeelab.com
1800 Coffee Lab Log-In Cart Header
Constant on every single page:
- Header
- 800 phone number listed on the upper left side of web page
- Log in, Cart and Search Option located in upper right side of site
Body
- Logo, located at the top ¼ of all pages
- Menu Bar, Located on the top ¼ of all pages
HOME COFFEE BLOG ABOUT US REGISTER WHOLESALE
- Large changing Graphic Image, located just below the menu bar of all pages
Footer
- Quick Links - Search, About Us
- Follow Us - Social Media: Twitter and Facebook
- Subscribe – Newsletter
HOME
- All constant elements
- Featured Items ( A selection of 4 of our coffee beans)
Coffee
- Landing page {Products} will feature all of the listed Coffee types below. You will be able to sort the coffee selections according to best-selling, alphabetically, price etc.
- Each of the below links will have:
- A title, price, quantity desired selection, bean description and geographical location of sourced bean.
- Ability to share the item on social media.
- Home redirect located at the top of the page.
- Description of the volume in each bag, delivery expectations and individual
- graphic images.
Coffee Selection Offered
- Classic Espresso (will include directions for proper brewing)
- Decaffeinated Coffee
- Organic Coffee
- Single Origin Coffee
- Specialty Blends
Blog
- All constant elements
- All Blogs according to date
About Us
- All constant elements
- A description of our company and our mission statement as well as a geographical map locator
Register
- All constant elements
- By registering w/The Coffee Lab our clients will be able to enter in their personal information. This information will be saved for future use making for a simple and convenient shopping experience.
Wholesale
- All constant elements
- This will be the location at which all retail establishments will be able to buy in bulk. A license will be required to order here.
#5 – 8 MOST IMPORTANT FACTORS IN SUCCESSFUL E-COMMERCE SITE DESIGN
The Coffee Lab Company focused on the eight most important factors of e-commerce website design to develop a successful website. The company began the planning process by accessing the functionality of the website. It is extremely important for all customers to be able to easily navigate and find what they are looking for by quickly looking at the home page of Coffee Lab's website. Customers should also be able to effortlessly sign-up to be a member, so for future visits the website will immediately identify them as a member if they have used the website before.
It is essential that customers visiting the website are provided with information about the products, services, customer reviews, customer ratings, and even expert advice from a Coffee Barista. All of these are examples to how the website supports a strong informational factor to consumers. The ease of use of the website is important because "time is money". Consumers are looking to find what they are looking for easily and quickly. Coffee Lab has committed to this factor by making sure the website is set-up like the majority of typical websites out there today.
In order for Coffee Lab to have the right amount of redundant navigation the website provides alternative navigation to the same content, so if a customer misses a link they can still get there another way. A few examples of how the Coffee Lab website provides different navigation alternatives are the search feature, sort feature, and category search. It was also, important that the Coffee Lab website provide consumers with ease of purchase. To satisfy this factor Coffee Lab offers a variety of payment options, which include: Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, and debit card. It will only take a few clicks for a customer to create an account with Coffee Lab. Customers have the ability to store their payment information so in the future their shopping experience will be even faster and easier. The website uses the shopping cart method which is very common, therefore making it easy for the consumer to check out and pay.
Coffee Lab does provide multi-browser functionality. Lastly, the website was designed focusing on the use of simple/clean graphics and legible text. There are simple pictures that are used to help entice customers to purchase products. Keeping with our branding the font size and color, background, and color scheme is consistent throughout the website.
#6 – WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT AND MAINTENANCE BUDGET
Building a website from the ground up can seem to be a daunting task. When researching the web there are many attractive deals that, cost wise, are attractive but would require a well versed professional to link the key components of a website on the back end to become the dynamic E-Commerce site we are looking to create.
Shopify is our sole provider of all of our web needs. Simply by registering for a Basic account ($29/ Month) we were able to create The Coffee Lab. Through Shopify we were able to generate our IP address and create our domain name. Our website is hosted by Shopify and comes with a full-featured content management system where we can edit our own HTML & CSS. The need of external web hosting is not necessary as Shopify plans offer unlimited e-commerce hosting that is secure. There are no Bandwidth fee’s associated with the account. Professionals are able to assist you with any of your needs 24/7 to help optimize your website and content. There are dozens of free tools available for our use such as an Invoice generator, QR Code generator, Shipping label template and the list goes on and on. This site enabled The Coffee Lab’s brand to become a reality.
Our shopping cart through Shopify is as secure as your local bank and is a 256-bit SSI certified account. Our clients personal information and credit card transaction information is fully secured (level 1 PCI DSS Compliant). We are able to use Shopify’s POS system w/a per purchase charge of 2.9% + $.30.
Being a start-up and not knowing for sure what our sales figures will be with a flexible account like this we are able to upgrade at any time to accounts that will significantly increase our sales reporting and offer gift cards while decreasing our per purchase credit card fee by 1-1.5%. There is no contract so we can cancel at any time. There is a 10% discount offered for yearly memberships.
GoDaddy will be our email provider. We have selected a Business Premium Professional email account ($7.99/month) that will utilize our domain name, ensure 50 GB of email storage, 1 TB of secure online storage for documents and files and access to download Office 2016 on up to 5 devices.
PayPal Pro will be used to process our credit card transactions ($30/month + 2.9% + $.30 per transaction). There are no start up or terminal fees. Shopify is a preferred vendor and will not charge their clients an additional fee for using PPP. With an easy to use Dashboard system you are able to receive detailed transaction history.
Our total fixed fees will be $66.99 a month with a variable expense for credit card processing fees.
#7 – STRATEGY TO MAXIMIZE SITE OPTIMIZATION
The business strategy that Coffee Lab will use to maximize the website optimization is by differentiation and focus strategies. To support these two strategies Coffee Lab will be marketing to Coffee Connoisseurs and Baristas. The website will promote the companies promise to ship all orders with a two day delivery guarantee after roasting is performed. Coffee Lovers will easily see from the website that the company uses the highest quality Arabica Coffee Beans that only have a single origin. The Coffee Lab site will also promote the company's participation in the Fair Trade Certified Coffee Program which helps farmers escape poverty.
We will also be embedding google analytics to our website. Using this invaluable resource will allow us to collect data such as: geographical location of visitors, length of time spent on pages, click through rate and devices used to make purchase/view our website pages.
#9 – PAYMENT METHODS AND SECURITY MEASURES
Coffee Lab will use PayPal as their online payment solution. PayPal is a global leader with online payments and is well known by consumers. It is very easy for merchants to sign up for a business account and provides everything you need to accept payments of all kinds, from any device, from any country. With PayPal, Coffee Lab will be able to accept credit and debit cards, and bank transfers. Coffee Lab will be using PayPal Payments Pro which allows us to use their shopping cart integration tool. PayPal offers solutions to protect buyer’s credit card information and simplified PCI compliance. PayPal Payments Pro is configurable to simplify PCI compliance and still allow customers to check out on your site. Another advantage is that Shopify is an established business partner with PayPal.