The purpose of this report is to present the finding of the web audit for the company named above. The company is owned by certified grower Werner Frtsch while the online website is the partnership venture equally owned by Werner Frtsch and his wife Lily that distributes Freshline’s groceries.
Organisational Objective
The organisational objectives of Freshline Organics Pty Ltd are as follow:-
• Promoting Sale of Organic Groceries and Products Online.
Similar to Freshline’s differentiated high quality focus strategy for its’ physical stores, its online activities aim to extend this strategy to the internet. Freshline.com.au has taken over the main purpose of the online activities, namely the sale of organic groceries over the internet and their delivery. To supplement the online sales, it also sells other organic dry products (i.e. nuts, grains and dried fruits) as well as environmentally-friendly products (i.e. skin care, hair care, bath/shower, baby care and household cleaning).
• On time Deliveries of Fresh Groceries to Customer at an affordable price.
Freshline differentiates its service with high freshness, accuracy and punctuality enabled by delivery teams of efficient van drivers.
• Promoting Health Eating Lifestyle by consuming organic harvested food.
Much of the organic produce comes directly from organic farms certified by Australian Certified Organic (ACO) in the Serpentine district south-east of Perth. The remainder of the produce is purchased from organic and conventional wholesalers. For instance, the biodynamic meats which sell to customers are supplied by Boatshed Quality Meats.
Positioning of the digital strategy and web site image.
The messages promoted from Freshlines’ traditional and online media are complementing each other. Just like its’ physical shops, their online offer uses a differentiation strategy targeting the upmarket. The services is designed to target affluent, busy people who have no time to shop, possible not living close to Freshline shops, but still prefer Freshline over other grocery shops or supermarkets.
Using the table below, Freshline online does try to attract the same kind of customers that also visit the store, but also tries to snap up customers that are not satisfied with the services offered by other online groceries shops.
Source: Mohammed, Rafi A. & Fisher, Robert J. & Jaworski, Bernard J., & Paddison, Gordon J. 2003. Internet Marketing, International Edition. New York, McGraw-Hill.
Being located in western suburb of Perth, where Freshline has its strongest presence, allows a strong brand leverage of the existing Freshline brand. Added to Freshline’s high quality products, their online business can differentiate itself from online competitors with the service that focus on supplies of high freshness organic groceries to customers on time at affordable costs.
Competitive Analysis
1) Orgainic Collective (http://www.organiccollective.com.au)
The Organic Collective is a small West Australian owned business offering a reliable online service of delivering mixed seasonal certified organic groceries to customers in the Fremantle and Perth Metro area.
Organic Collective centres on delivering right to your door and letting consumer decide the delivery arrangements. If customer was not at home to receive delivery, arrangement can be made with delivery man like placing of the delivery in a sheltered position on the front veranda or a pre-determined location, etc
The vibrant site breaks down the products into 6 different categories(organic fruits & vegetable mix box, organics groceries, environment cleaning products, personal care products, organic supplements and other organic products to choose from and, when clicking the link, gives you the different products under categories. The site offers PayPal system for customers to make payment online.
2) Mimsbrook Farm Biodynamic Food Stores (http://www.biodynamic-food.com/index.html)
Mimsbrook Biodynamic/Organic Food Store provides a convenient farm location for the residents of Perth to purchase quality biodynamic/organic groceries, milk, dry goods and meat that are grown and farmed without using synthetic fertilisers or pesticides. It is a family business operated by Ms Carmel Bainbridge and her son Steven Bradtke, both of whom have been committed to certified biodynamic agriculture in Western Australia since Year 1995.
Not only Mimsbrook website look very impressive, it also does has something that other online organic shops do not, that is “Holiday” other that organic groceries and products. Clicking on an icon ”Holiday” on the left column of homepage links you to another webpage which offers a holiday accommodation at Mimsbrook farm Guesthouse near Perth, Western Australia. This webpage displays various prices for suites/studios at this fantastic farm Guesthouse. If customers wish to book an accommodation, all you have to is to click at this host name icon “Carmel Bainbridge” for website to generate an email to send it to the host. Once the receiving email with necessary information is verified and confirmed with customers, the host will prepare accommodation for them.
3) Organic N Green Shop (http://www.organicngreen.com.au)
Organic N Green Shop is a “one stop” online shop comprising an organic shop and cafe in Wanneroo, Western Australia, Its’ services include the selling of full range of organic fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy, groceries, cakes, personal care, baby care, laundry items, etc and home delivery of its products.
The Organic green.com has a clean layout homepage with clear statement about what the company does. The company logo is prominently on top left hand corner of homepage and in proximity to a list of function keys, services and products offered within the site. The search key is also unique in the fact that the user can start shopping right away if they know the products they want by searching for keywords that brings up all products with that name, allowing for easy shopping.
In addition, Organic Green shop offers cash discount for first time customers who surf the website; print homepage and show it entitles a 15% discount for the organic groceries purchases for the first time. Alternately, the customers can use to waive delivery charge for their first home delivery order.
Content and maximisation of digital and Internet features
An audit analysis includes a comprehensive evaluation of the following areas was carried out:-
1. Homepage Assessment
The homepage of the freshline.com is quite neat and it provides online visitors with key information about the business as well as the products and services the business. The company logo” is prominently positioned on top centre of homepage and in close proximity to clickable menu which is easily accessible.
2. Framework and Navigation
Overall, the framework and navigation of the Freshline.com is intuitive and easy to navigate. The navigation placed on the left column of the page is a consistent feature throughout the website. Navigation links for each page are also positioned prominently and easily located. The Navigation links do have expended information to further describe the content of the destination. The web pages contain anchor links to facilitate fast browsing. Standardize placement of navigation, header and footer helps to orient the online users at all times.
3. Layout & Design / Use of Graph
Page layout and design of Freshline.com looks simple and easy to understand. The recurring text, modules and graphics are consistent throughout the pages on the website. The fonts used on the website are of good sizes which the content easy to read.
Freshline.com.au uses some of picture jpg and icons to enhance its’ webpage but it did not fully utilize graphics or picture to promote the online products
4. Site Content
The site contents in Freshline.com are clear and concise enough regardless of the user’s field of expertise. The mention of the company history is brief and to the point. The website which strongly promoting health eating lifestyle further elaborate the meanings of some organic terms used (i.e. organic food, farming, biodynamic food, Australia certified organic, etc). This clarity of the site content as well as its’ organization has played a major role in keeping and converting the visitors into customers.
5. Feedback and Contacts
Freshline.com encourages both current and prospective customers contact them with feedback and suggestion by using interactive form provided within the website.
6. Privacy policy – Lack of privacy policy as online customers are increasingly concerned about their privacy with regards to online shopping and repayment of goods.
7. Interactive Elements (Forms)
Freshline.com uses this feature to enhance some sections of the website:-
o Contact and feedback from which allows user to input feedback and suggestion.
o Ordering of organic product using online Shopping Cart.
o Payment of online goods via the secure credit payment page.
All form labels are alighted with their controls and positioned intuitively for the user.
8. Search Engine optimization (SEO)
SEO refers to key components programmed into a web page which search engines will index, store and reference when queries into those topics. Based on my finding, though each contains title tags that summarise the content of the page. But the description tags are not utilized within each page which prevent the appropriate information from being displayed in a search engine listing as well as reduces search engine visibility of the page.
9. Search Engine Visibility
Many web users start their search for product and company information through the use of a general search or directories. To determine how easy it is find this freshline.com.au from web, I have conducted search exercise on Australian Top five search engines using the company name and keyword/key phases. The results are summarized below.
Keyword Position for Freshline.com.au on Australian Search Engines
& Directories as of 10 Sept 2009
Keywords Google Australia Yahoo!7 Nine MSM
(Bing) Ansearch.com
Australia AltaVista
Australia
Freshline 1 1 1 1 1
Freshline organics 1 1 1 1 1
Organics 15 Not on first
5 page Not on first
5 page Not on first
5 page Not on top
5 page
Organics grocery 7 49 29 16 14
Biodynamic meat 8 9 6 12 9
Online groceries shop Australia 13 8 19 24 8
Basically, this website can be found across the web using the company name “Freshline” and Freshline organics.
10. Site Search Module – No search function is available which used specified words or instruct a search engine to retrieve information within this website.
Summary
The Sample, Inc., website has a reasonably good, clean and simple design that will not intimidate or
confuse visitors to the site. Navigation menus are well positioned and are consistent throughout the
entire site. Good navigation is important for a site that contains so many products and pages.
The current online strategy deployed (using digital and internet features that we discussed before the summary) has able to increase some foot traffic into their shops as well as visitors to Freshline.com but the impact of increase is not very significant. Because of website’s limitations:-
• Web-pages look unattractive, even quite boring for anyone to look further.
• Website did not use these: Search Engine Optimization (SE0), Search Engine visibility, site search module, etc to boost web traffic and visibility
• .
Freshline is not able to attract big volume of online customers to the website.
A more thorough dissuasion will be discussed in next assessment 3 on development of a digital strategy for this business.
References
http://www.freshline.com.au
Australia Certified Organic (http://www.bfa.com.au/)
Mohammed, Rafi A. & Fisher, Robert J. & Jaworski, Bernard J., & Paddison, Gordon J. 2003. Internet Marketing, International Edition. New York; McGrawHill.
http://www.organiccollective.com.au
http://www.organicngreen.com.au/
http://www.biodynamic-food.com/index.html
http://www.google.com.au/
http://au.yahoo.com/
http://ninemsn.com.au/
http://www.ansearch.com.au/
http://au.altavista.com/