IS Overview and Strategy

Utilizing the right information systems can be critical to the success of the company. It is therefore imperative that we choose and implement the hardware and software systems that will aid our growth and sustain our competitive advantage. Leashless makes significant use of information technology in its operations through use of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.
We are introducing our product to a large number of smaller stores as opposed to quickly selling through large chain retailers. Such an approach embodies a long tail strategy by targeting a lot of smaller unit blocks of sales as opposed to a few large blocks of sales. In later years we will switch our distribution method to cover some of the short tail by selling first through Petco and then to PetSmart. This strategic adjustment allows us to address as much of the market as possible.
One way we use information systems to differentiate our product is through our online marketing campaigns. On our website, we will emphasize how our product is used to train the dog to stay close to you. For process innovation, we will monitor our KPI’s and keep track of two main indicators: the defect rate and shopping cart usage. Whenever there is a defective product that has been rejected from our production line we will record what type of defect it is and when it occurred so we can adjust processes accordingly and monitor quality. We will also monitor how many users have placed the product into their online shopping card but failed to follow through with the purchase, thus leaving the product to remain only on their wish list. By tracking this, we will see the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns in generating interest of our product and also check if there are any conversion issues from customers being interested to actually making a purchase.

Website Design

We decided to develop our website using Wix as a platform due to its ease of use, access to more advanced features and better designing capabilities. After looking at our competitors’ websites, which contained large, overcrowded amounts of information, we shifted our approach to reflect a simplistic and clean design. Our landing page features a slideshow of graphics related to our creative design strategy. To direct visitors to explore our website, it also includes three simple call to action links: “Shop”, “Learn More” and “Free your Dog”. These three buttons serve our goal of making the website easy to navigate and to attempt and educate visitors about our product. On the header of our website we also offer a menu bar which includes the following tabs.

Each of the following tabs are displayed beneath our logo as headers on every page and serve a unique purpose to make navigation of our website easy:

Home: To redirect back to landing page
About Us: To familiarize the customer with the Leashless team
Products: To feature a picture of the product, price, brief description, reviews, and an option to add it to the cart.
Contact us: To provide company information
Pet 101: To link blogs and articles about general tips pertaining to the care of your dog.

The main colors of our website are blue and gray. We specifically chose blue because our survey responses have proven that the greatest concern of the product is safeness. (Add footnote “The Psychology of Color in Marketing” by June Campbell, and “The Profit of Color” by Color Marketing Group) The color blue entices the sensation of trust, security, and reliability, and gray portrays solidness.maturity permenance dependability FOOTIE The simplicity of the website also implies these characteristics. The colors intertwined with the design of the webpage correlatively work to increase the Click-Through Rates (CTR). Research has shown that 42% of shoppers base their opinion on website design alone, and 52% did not return to the website because of poor aesthetics. We focus heavily on our website