How to start your own online business?
Find the variant that suits you most.
The “website” notion is now well-known and many consider that having a site means to ensure the success. Yes, this supposition was true in the early age of the Internet, when only a few websites were online; but today, when there are millions of e-commerce sites, having your own site doesn’t matter at all, even if the base of the website is a brain wave. To get the best results out of a website, the owner must target real and tangible objectives and to carefully plan his future actions in order to meet these objectives with success.
The most important thing is to be realistic. Aparently, doing business on the Internet is not that expensive; you could say that it will usually be cheaper than opening a real store, when starting a “classical” business can take up to 100.000 EURO, plus the monthly wages, rent and other expenses. The Internet potential to reach the customers is quite high, but they’re still “potential customers”.
Today, being an innovative company doesn’t mean having a website anymore. What really matters is the way that website is going to be used. There are over 4 billlions websites online right now.
What do you have to keep in mind when working-out a business plan?
Here are some questions that will help you desing your objectives:
- Who are your customers, what are their preferences and where are they located on the Internet? (crucial aspect)
- Which are the company’s and product’s strategies in the sales field?
- What makes your company, products, marketing and website unique?
- How will these factors increase your sales?
- What strategy will you use in selling your products?
- How much will this selling cost?
- What turn-over might you have in the first two years?
- What selling options will be catching for your future customers?
- What is the profitableness rate – How many customers should view the site to place an order?
- What investment is required to achieve your objectives?
Today, many products are suitable to be advertised and sold on the Internet, like: books, music CDs, products that are generaly easy to be delivered.
Tou make yourself an image on the market, you only have to remember the most successful product
fields: computers, ticketing, clothing, jewelery, gifts, flowers, food, liqueur etc.
How will you act?
After deciding which are your available resources and which e-commerce model suits you best,
you have to decide how to carry on the project. Building and launching a business web site
will involve some expenses, that can be more correctly predicted if a good site project is built.
You will have to take a decision based on the answers at the following questions:
- will you use your own webserver?
- how will this server be connected to the Internet?
- will your site be designed by a specialised company, or your company has it’s own webdesigners, who could accomplish the task of designing your website?
- who will administrate the site?
- what command options/features will you use? What payment ways will be available for your customers?
- will you buy, rent or design your own e-commerce website?
Available choices:
- Promotional packages – they contain e-business variants that will mainly comply with your needs, even if some configurations will have to be adjusted according to your needs. You will save time and money by buying one of these packages.
- Renting a virtual space on the Internet might be a second choice, for those who don’t have enough technical knowledge and/or cannot afford trained specialists to maintain their sistems. You will find special places on the Internet for renting a virtual space, the so-called e-malls.
- In case you have your own web designers employed by your company, you can create your own e-business, according to your needs.
- The names given to domains must be easy to remember as Internet Addresse. Like a product’s label,
your domain name must be one of the most important aspects related to the website, and it has to be:
- suggestive for those who use it for the first time
- specific and easy to be pronounced
- short, to be easily written
Choose your domain name carefully, it will be the “key” to your business’s success!
Choose your website's design!
There is a very simple rule in designing a website and it can be applied to the e-commerce as well: "more in less". Hold back your temptation to overload the design. Graphical effects, animations and music may impress you, but most of your visitors will not wait for your company's fancy logo to display.
Well made websites are those which balanced the graphical effects with the displaying speed. Make sure that your customers will find easily and very quickly the informations they were looking for on your site, no matter what browsing path they might have taken. The way the information is placed on your website is very important, if you want to avoid your customers being stuck into your website, without any links to other informations. That's why it is most necessary to put on your website only the optimal quantity of information; a perfect balance is hard to achieve, but not impossible.
The products must have first-class images
An inadequate quality of these images wil cut back or even totally take out your sales. A very good example can be found in any store, where the customers are generally atracted to those products which have quality wrappings. So your product's image on the Internet must be clear and attractive. Try it! If you are not satisfied with your images quality, you might need to find a better photographer.
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