Century 21 USA
http://century21usa.com/
Century 21 is one of the biggest property companies in the United States of America.
It provides services such as representing buyers or sellers of properties, representing tenants and landlords.
One of the features of the website allows properties seekers to search for their ideal homes with the help of a search engine. The potential buyers can search for available units depending on price range, number of bedrooms, or unit size. They can even search for a particular features or style of the property. Century 21 is a huge corporation with franchise offices around the world, therefore prospective customers might prefer to refer themselves to a particular branch or even a particular agent instead. Hence the search engine is build so that customers will be able to search for them based on their name, the state they are in.
This streamlined search engine helps buyers save time and also allow them to locate an agency nearest to them. As internet is borderless, it helps the company to open up their market to overseas buyers as foreigners will be able to choose any properties and dial the corresponding office to make enquiries or even an order if they choose to do so.
There is a “Buying Advice” tab which helps educate potential buyers. Most of the time, many home seekers do not know what are the legal proceedings when purchasing a property, or even things like getting a mortgage, insurance for the property or when is the best time to move into the house. Therefore, the website helps to educate the buyers and in turn it will help to make for a smoother transaction of the property.
There is a “mortgage calculator” to help the buyers understand the possible monthly installments that they can opt for. All the buyers need to do is to input the various mortgage prices and the “mortgage calculator” function will compute the numbers. It even helps buyers to compare renting versus buying.There is even an “affordability calculator” which, based on the customers income, tax and debts, will assist the customer to calculate the maximum value of a property they are able to buy, it also includes possible bank loans.
Both feature will be able to assist the buyers to save time and also help them to make rational decisions when buying a house as they will have more information available to them.
The “Selling Advice” tab, like the “Buying Advice” tab, is used for educating purposes. It educates the sellers of legal proceedings, marketing plan, and the expected completion date for the transaction.The “contact us” feature of the website helps sellers to locate the nearest agency offices.
To help viewers navigate the website, there is a “tutorial” video that guides the viewers.
The “Careers & Franchise” tab, once users click on it, it shows you a video of the speech by the CEO of the company. After entering either the “careers” or “franchise” screens it provides details on how the company can help the job seekers or companies seeking franchise opportunity.
The colour theme of the website is mainly black and gold. It gives the website a more corporate image. Gold is also the company’s colour. The website is easy to navigate and is interactive with its viewers.
Rite Pizza(http://www.rite-pizza.com/)
Rite Pizza is a pizza restaurant located in Singapore. Although the company faces pressure from larger company, more establish company such as Pizza Hut and Canadian Pizza, they manage to establish a niche for themselves, by selling a fusion of Italian and Asian pizzas and side dishes and true their usage of an E-delivery system through phone calls and an online menu. Thus they thrived and expanded with outlets from East Coast all the way to Jurong East with delivery as their main mode of service.
So how do customers make an order?
Well first they log onto the website (http://www.rite-pizza.com/), after which a selection of menu will be shown to them with the current offers (for example, right now you are able to buy one pizza and get one free). In the menu itself, it is properly split up with into categories to assist customers to choose the pizza and side dish they want and a price tag. When they have decided on what they want, they will give Rite Pizza a call to place order, after which Rite Pizza will receive the order and deliver it to the customers within 40min.
Rite Pizza’s website will, as said earlier, serve as a menu in which customers will be able their orders. Each individual food is tagged with a price, allowing customers to calculate how much their orders will cost. There are also pictures and a brief description of the pizzas and side dishes to assist customers to decide on what they want, especially so if they are considering of buying a particular meal that they have not tried before.
Customers are also able to make use of the feedback email address given on the website to submit any complains, issues, or area of improvement to the company. This will allow Rite Pizza to improve their services and their business as a whole using customers’ feedback.
There are some advantages of incorporating E-Commerce in Rite Pizza business. First, it’s the usage of the website, eye catching graphics, a good layout of the menu with brief description of individual items which allow customers to obtain necessary information at a glance allows Rite Pizza to attract more customers. Second is their usage of a feedback system which allows the business to receive inputs from their customers, thus allowing them to progress further and to improve on their services. Third is their location, because their branches are strategically placed around Singapore, this allow a quick response time so that once they receive an order they will be able to swiftly and efficiently deliver the goods to their customers. Fourth is the fact that E-Commerce help reduce their transaction cost, as they are primarily a delivery service, and thus their branches are not restaurant per say, but rather kitchens and counters, thus saving on furniture and other necessities for a restaurant.Although Rite Pizza as been using E-Commerce relatively well, but there are some things that they are able to improve on. First, when compared with other delivery services such as Mac Donald’s Mac Delivery service, I realize that Rite Pizza lack an online ordering service, having this service might help the company cut cost and allow customers other modes of services to choose from rather then just using the telephone. Also even though Rite Pizza have a feedback form, it is not transparent enough in that they could allow their customers to read the feedback online, this will actually make the company work harder to ensure better services and to assure customers that they will take their feedback seriously.
To conclude, E-Commerce has and will continue to help Rite Pizza to deliver their products efficiently and quickly to their customers. With effective use of their call centre, website and their network of branches, they will continue to provide good service and still keep transaction costs down.
This project is jointly done by:
Soo Meng Feng & Lim Swee Kiat
