The strategy behind the project; defining the objectives of the online business and identifying the online target group, the mission and the positioning of the web site. Estimating the life cycle of the online customer.

What objectives do we want to reach online? Increase sales? Acquire new customers or expand our market? Do we want to optimize the support and management costs? Or do we want to create a long-term, profitable, multi-channel, low-cost relationship with our target market?

At the beginning of the story, Jacques and his team are looking to focus on the basic elements of their online business; they ask themselves what they want the mission and the value proposal of their online project to be, what their image, brand and positioning will be, how to identify and weigh up the dimensions of their online target and how to estimate the return-on-investment over the mid- to long-term.

Jacques: "How can we reconcile our current brand with our online image? Do you think we should create a new brand or not? And how should we manage the brand that we have?"

Cri: "If the new business can be run entirely online, it may be useful to create a new brand, and, indeed, it is often advisable to do so, especially when you want to reach a different target with a different product through a new channel.”