4: Ask The Doctor.com - Case Study Example

Case 4: Ask the Doctor.com Overview The medical industry has been largely affected by advances in technology. “Ask the doctor.com” is a website that provides information regarding health related problems to patients. The company owners, Chand and Sharma, are not able to dedicate 100% of their time to the site, and this is a problem, which the business faces. Chand struggled to benchmark the site, by assessing if the site was growing at the expected rate. He realized that the site was not growing as quickly as he had hoped.

He wondered if they could do something different to increase the growth rate of the site. Recommendation #1 The first problem entailed inadequate time and revenue to employ full time medical staff to respond to questions posted on the site; the two owners of the site could solve this. The two can source for revenue by collaborating with other companies so that they may continue to offer their medical advice, but the other company may be getting a share of the profits attained (Turow 52). The other option that they could discuss is to hold on with the status, until the company’s site starts to earn enough revenue to support the payment of the extra staff that will be hired.

The latter option is time consuming, but is the best option since the owners will still maintain their control and ownership status (Turow 53). Justification The above is justified because of the problem that the site is facing. This is so since the two owners cannot dedicate their full time to the running of the site. The site is growing at a rate, which calls for the employment of extra staff that will be tasked to run the site when the two are not available. Implementation The company can implement the first option by accepting the offers already on their disposal proposed by companies such as Kosmix and GSK.

These companies are willing to take a percentage share of the profits made. The implementation of the second option is much simpler, but it will take a lot of time if the site’s growth rate is slow. Chand and Sharma should implement other options that will increase the popularity of their site, with this they will increase the revenue that the site earns and reduce the total time taken to implement the second option (Hooper 77). Recommendation #2 The growth rate of the firm resulted in the second problem that the two owners of the site had to face.

The site did not have the necessary traffic, which was necessary to generate the revenue that the two had hopped to get from the site. This problem interlinks with the first one. Justification The above problem can be justified by Chand who is experienced when it comes to websites. He had noticed that the growth rate of the site was not as high as they had expected it to get. It can also be justified by level of traffic directed to the site and the revenue that it generates. Implementation The site manager has to find ways of increasing traffic to the site (Turow 54).

This could be done by forming a business relationship with search engines like Google, so that some traffic could be redirected to the site. Another option, which they could explore, is collaborating with Kosmix. Kosmix will prove helpful by developing their site and business idea (Hooper 88). They could also try market affiliation; this is through giving cash or other forms of benefits to any other site that wishes to redirect their traffic to their site. The partners also have the option of optimizing their website; this is whereby they increase the visibility of their site in search engines (Hooper 89).

A distinctive tactic that can be used to do this is editing their “HTML” source code so that it accommodates relevant, specific keywords that will increase the hits when the words are searched in the search engines. Works cited Hooper L. Business : the ultimate resource. Beijing: Citic Publishing House, 2007. Print. Turow J. Media Today: An Introduction to Mass Communication. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2011. Print.