dvd-unlimited

Business Plan 2002

Background Section

Business Idea/Concept:

We, dvd-unlimited, provide entertainment seekers of all ages a site with DVD news, synopses, reviews, and links to low-priced merchants.

Team:

Our team has 4 members; Marc Johnson, Lindsey Newton, Matt Bell and Brad Harris. All four members completed Business 101 here at the University of Oregon and were very active in the course. Marc has past experience building and designing websites, and Lindsey has gained small business knowledge working in an accounting firm for the past two years. All four members plan to help with every aspect of this project, but Marc will be mainly responsible for web construction while Brad, Matt, and Lindsey will research competition, gather DVD info, and comprise an effective e-mail campaign.

Target Market:

Our target market includes anyone interested in learning about or purchasing DVD's. This market has people of all ages, so we plan to offer information on DVD’s for younger as well as mature audiences. The people looking for our product do not necessarily have extensive knowledge on DVD’s and where to buy them, so we are going to make it very easy for an inexperienced internet user to learn all they want about our product. Although the number of people online who fit this demographic can only be estimated, it can be sure there are hundreds of thousands. Dvdtalk.com, a large site that offers DVD reviews, news, and message boards, gets 250,000 visitors per month and has 90,000 newsletter subscribers, and they have only been around for three years.

Competition:

Website Business	Strengths	Weaknesses	Opportunity for us?
Competitor #1: www.amazon.com -offers wide selection of books, CD’s, movies, DVD’s	This is a large, well-known site that has just about everything you’re looking for.	The site may be “too big;” not giving many details on specific products.	We can concentrate solely on DVD’s and give in-depth details Amazon.com does not.
Competitor#2: www.dvdreview.com -has info on hundreds of dvd’s; along with reviews, message boards, & news	This site has a ton of information as well as several other unique features. The graphics and layout is also very eye-catching.	The information given is plentiful, but seems unorganized and somewhat overwhelming.	We can build our site so that it gives useful information in an easy to find, organized fashion.
Us: dvd-unlimited	We are very interested in our product and know what our customers are looking for.	We have no money, no experience, little time, and stiff competition.	We can learn how to work fast and be efficient with the resources we have.

Objectives

• Our company realizes that there are several long-running, quality websites focused on reviewing and selling DVD’s; but we are still confident we will be successful based on the time and resources we are allotted. Our goal is to receive hits from at least 30 of our classmates and another 50 or so from other Internet shoppers or information seekers. We also aim to make at least $10(two DVD’s bought through our site) by the beginning of March.

• dvd-unlimited is going to have a strong focus on the marketing aspect of our site. Our objective is to get at least a 15% response from our e-mail campaign. The in class competitions are very valuable to us because our classmates are going to be more involved in this project than anyone else. If we can give them what they are looking for our site will probably get a lot more attention.

• We plan to have an intensive e-mail campaign where we can reach as many people as possible. If 20% of recipients click through to our site, we will consider our campaign a success. We also aim for a 1-2% buyer rate.

Strategies/Tactics

Product:

dvd-unlimited offers information on DVD’s of all types for all ages. We will give reviews, summaries, news, and a place to buy the DVD’s discussed. This is very valuable to our target market of entertainment seekers because they will able to find all types of information without the feeling of being pressured to buy.

Affiliates:

After searching for quality affiliates to help us earn commission, we have found a system that will be simple and profitable. By joining Commission Junction we can then become an affiliate of the online merchant Half.com. After researching other DVD sellers we have concluded that Half.com offers some of the best prices online. It also has one of the best commission deals as well. Our company will earn $5 for every DVD that is bought as a result of a visit to dvd-unlimited. This comes out to almost 35% commission in some cases. All we need to do is first sign up with Commission Junction and then we will be able to apply for the Half.com affiliate program. After we accept the terms and they review our site we can start earning money.

Place:

We are going to try and reach our target customers using a couple methods. The first is through search engines. There are millions of Internet users that use these searches to find just about anything. We plan to use Web Page Gold to build a site that is search engine friendly. The higher we are on the search, the greater the chance we will gain customers. We are also going to reach our market in class. Our peers are big-time consumers, plus, they are involved similar projects and as a result will have more interest.

Price:

dvd-unlimited is not going to be a site that preaches “the best deals on the web”. We have confidence in the prices of our affiliate; so we will simply list the Half.com price and let our customers decide from there. Our site is going to focus more on reviews and detailed information than pushing DVD sales. This is because we know there are hundreds of great DVD sites out there that sell the product. We want to offer specifics that are hard to find anywhere else, and by using this to attract Internet users we believe we can get people to buy through us.

Promotion:

As mentioned before, we are going to use search engines as a method of promotion. We are also going to formulate an e-mail campaign that reaches as many people as possible. We realize the success of our campaign is crucial to our success, so we plan to work very hard on this aspect of our project.

Metrics:

Our business is going to measure success primarily through Hypermart. By signing on with this online service for free we can determine what parts of our site are a success and what parts need improvement. We will also place a survey on our site that classmates and anyone else can voluntarily fill out.