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My Internet Business And Getting It Running |
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Written by Trisha Frauenhofer
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Tuesday, 22 April 2008 |
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When you are thinking about starting up your own online business you will want to have a pre-launch plan in place before jumping in with both feet. Consider it the blue print to creating a successful business.
by TrishaFrauenhofer
When you are thinking about starting up your own online business you will want to have a pre-launch plan in place before jumping in with both feet. Consider it the blue print to creating a successful business.
The overall structure of my internet business check list is the business plan. It should cover the steps you want your business to grow through, factoring in cash reserves, cash outlay, marketing budget and operating capital. Fortunately, internet businesses are low overhead operations.
I designed my own web site, rather than hiring someone to do it for me. Now, I'd taken a college extension course, and I read a few books about Meta tags but when I look at my old site, I sigh. It was overly elaborate, it barely used CSS style sheets, and it was more work than was feasible to maintain. This time around, I hired a pro - and they installed a lot of server side tools, like WordPress, to let me focus on running my internet business, not maintaining my web site.
About the only thing I did right last time was learn the ins and outs of using Register.com for setting up my domain names. My designer helped me find a hosting provider who could install the software I wanted to make this all work, which helped a lot.
The other place where my designer helped a lot was getting me to realize that More isn't always Better. She took out her laptop, hooked up a cellular modem to it, and we loaded my old site. There was time to grab a cup of coffee and watch the birds before enough of it loaded for me to be able to see what the site was about. Dulls ville. By using Cascading Style Sheets (the CSS stuff I mentioned earlier), she was able to make it dynamic and much more attractive. (I was still using JPEGs of titles in a fancy fontoy.)
She also helped me set up my customer feedback forums, and talked to me about font choices and usability. While she disagreed with stuff that Jacob Nielsen recommends (mostly because his sites look ugly and dated), she did point out that my content needed to be the focus of my site, and readability was key.
Before you launch into business ready to make millions, you will want to have a plan for getting customers to your site. You can not exactly make millions without any clients. You may have the best looking web site, with superior products at the absolute best prices, but without customers none of that really matters.
Traffic building is still something of a black art, but I'm focusing on keyword ad buy purchases - and believe it or not, advertising in the Daily Nickel newspapers. Since what I sell is household items, and tips on home organization, it's a natural mix of old style advertising and new. I also make sure that I'm in the Organizer's Circle of blog referrals, which helps a lot on getting on to social networking sites and builds relevance ratings.
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