Business Preflight Check Lists For My Internet Business
submitted: 2008-04-12 09:00:04 |
by: TrishaFrauenhofer
Total views: 35 |
Word Count: 571 |
| 
I have a confession to make. This is my second Internet business, and I'm starting it having learned from the mistakes I made in the first one. I took a course at the Small Business Administration on business management and planning, and I'm amazed at how many things I did wrong the first time. Consider this a blueprint for avoiding the mistakes I made.
One of the basic pre-launch steps you want to have covered is a detailed business plan that will cover even the most minute detail. Remember you can never have things too planned out.
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.
Conversely, you'll need to park your domain name; this we recommend doing yourself, and taking good notes. Domain names and domain name registration are sort of like potato chips. Once you start building web sites and making money off of them, you'll find that you're spending odd hours looking at interesting domain names with an intention to park them and use them later.
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 font.)
When designing the site (or working with the designer), remember the KISS principal: Keep It Small, Stupid. No matter how shiny the graphics are, no matter how whizzbang the Flash animation is, your goal is to have something that loads almost instantly. Take the time to hit your site with a dial up modem; if it takes long enough that you wouldn't wait for it, make a low graphics main entry page and work from there.
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.
A sure fire method it getting traffic to your store is to get your business in the top twenty search engine results. Keep your business in plain sight for everyone to see. Advertise on related web sites and you will see customer traffic begin to pull into your web site. Back links, keywords, SEO's, and strategically placed ads should all be created by your design firm, and will get you high search engine rankings.
About the Author
Trisha Frauenhofer is an online marketing expert who enjoys sharing her most powerful online secrets including the Online Traffic Formula
Comments
No comments posted.
You do not have permission to comment. If you log in, you may be able to comment.
