Cliptomania Web Store
Unit IV Case Study
This case study is an analysis of the strategic issues faced by The Cliptomania Web Store in the development and launch of their e-business venture. Cliptomania, LLC, owned and operated by the Santo family, is an e-business that sells clip-on earrings throughout the United States, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand (Brown, DeHayes, Hoffer, Martin, & Perkins, 2012). The Santos have discovered an underserved market niche and turned it into a viable e-business.
The first issue encountered by the Santo family was setting up the Web store. None of the family members had the expertise, not to mention the start-up capital, to contract with an internet service provider for the computer resources, software packages, or site design. The Santos overcame this obstacle by contracting with a vendor – in this case, Yahoo! – to host the store. Yahoo! provided the computer resources and integrated software necessary, as well as a customizable template for the Santos to personalize their site. Another vendor, Paymentech, was integrated with Yahoo! to validate credit cards and process payments for Cliptomania.
Marketing was another issue encountered. With the dot-com bust in the early 2000s, the cost of listing the website in search engines increased based on the number of “clicks.” The Santos soon found, however, that this increased cost resulted in increased sales and now consider it an acquisition cost. Cliptomania also ventured into search engine advertising and pay for searches based on keywords that are selected by the company.
When the Santos decided to change Web service providers in 2006, they encountered issues with “falling off the radar” in the major search engines. They had been operating the store as cliptomania.com and were now cliptomania.net, which for some reason, caused confusion in the search engines. After making several changes to try to combat the situation, the Santos moved the content back to cliptomania.com, which
This case study is an analysis of the strategic issues faced by The Cliptomania Web Store in the development and launch of their e-business venture. Cliptomania, LLC, owned and operated by the Santo family, is an e-business that sells clip-on earrings throughout the United States, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand (Brown, DeHayes, Hoffer, Martin, & Perkins, 2012). The Santos have discovered an underserved market niche and turned it into a viable e-business.
The first issue encountered by the Santo family was setting up the Web store. None of the family members had the expertise, not to mention the start-up capital, to contract with an internet service provider for the computer resources, software packages, or site design. The Santos overcame this obstacle by contracting with a vendor – in this case, Yahoo! – to host the store. Yahoo! provided the computer resources and integrated software necessary, as well as a customizable template for the Santos to personalize their site. Another vendor, Paymentech, was integrated with Yahoo! to validate credit cards and process payments for Cliptomania.
Marketing was another issue encountered. With the dot-com bust in the early 2000s, the cost of listing the website in search engines increased based on the number of “clicks.” The Santos soon found, however, that this increased cost resulted in increased sales and now consider it an acquisition cost. Cliptomania also ventured into search engine advertising and pay for searches based on keywords that are selected by the company.
When the Santos decided to change Web service providers in 2006, they encountered issues with “falling off the radar” in the major search engines. They had been operating the store as cliptomania.com and were now cliptomania.net, which for some reason, caused confusion in the search engines. After making several changes to try to combat the situation, the Santos moved the content back to cliptomania.com, which
References: Brown, C. V., DeHayes, D. W., Hoffer, J. A., Martin, E. W., & Perkins, W. C. (2012). Managing information technology (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.