Business plan first
First you'd need to have to have a Business plan that depends on your Business nature and how your business implemented, what you sell and how you sell it.
In your mind and on paper you'd have to outline an absolute bare minimum Business plan:
- What your company does, your prospects to grow, what is missing from your product line and your company ability to add new products or improve on existing ones
- Your company strong and weak points and how your Internet portion of the Business could make money and how soon
- Your current Company standings against competition
- How significant your impact on competition online business would be and what would it takes to make that impact. Do you have enough assets to be successful in online business
- Could you afford a new project that most likely will take some time to accomplish
- Business increase you expect from "going online"
- Absolute maximum timeframe for creating online version of your business
- Goals to achieve for online business with set dates and profits
Share your business plan with your kids and grandparents. If they understand your plan and goals you maybe in good shape. Bounce your ideas agaist your accountant, layer and business advisors to hear their opinions.
Start your search for a Internet Business Professional. Once your online Business plan is outlined you are ready to start searching for a company or a group of professional who will help you make your business prosper on the Internet.
Where to start looking for a professional if you do not have one in-mind? Even if you do know a professional who could do the job for you - the following thoughts often play an important role in choosing proper people for the job:
- Choose local company or developer if possible - it will help in case of a performance dispute.
- Have all project aspects including total price of complete project on paper so there would be no questions later as who must do what.
- Never fall for a technical pitch of a company speaker with huge promises of prosperous online business once they build you an e-commerce site.
- Do not listen to statements that this operating system is better than the other and that's why our company (developers) could deliver a better project. Always look for what you have and how it will work with what they will build for you. Often there are one or two underwater stones that come with operating system differences used on a different sites. Make sure your people would know how to overcome those differences should they arise and it will not cost you three times as much as your Internet project.
- Get second, third, fourth opinion from completely independent companies. Have their resumes checked-out with their clients (preferably local) and always give any information a long thought.
- Have a separate Internet professional checking online performance of any sites your prospective professionals built in the past. Never take anybody's word for granted.
- Stay clear of "Get your Business up and running in a week" statements. Online Business is an everyday job as any other job out there and there is no quick online buck as we know it today.
It takes knowledge, persistency and dedicated group of people to make your online Business successful! - Make sure you understand - there is no free lunch in online business too!
In case of a professional services - you get what you paid for. It takes years to become an Internet professional who knows ins-and-outs of Business implementations. It's not how beautiful website looks - it's what it does that counts.
At the same time professional with the pride will never let a lame-looking website to be seen by others.
Places NOT to search for Internet Business Professionals There are places where in 99% of the cases you will find an Internet Profissional who will be willing to build an online Business for you and why you do not want to go there:
- Web Hosting facilities/companies
- Domain Name registration firms
- You local ISP
- Nationwide or Major ISPs like Verison, AT&T, Comcast etc.
Why Web Hosting company or ISP wouldn't build a good site for you?
- They are in a different kind of business - hosting, connecting people to the internet or hosting a domain name servers.
The whole purpose of their business is to provide you with their service and if they could make a few dollars on design it is considered an add-on business for them - They may not be aware of many evolving Internet technologies. Take a look at their own website to see if it is easy to use.
- Their usual "do-it-all" package more often than not goes against your idea of promoting your online business and in many cases simply uses an outdated technology that could harm your business
- If not all but most of their packages state the simplicity of promotion and making your business/website successful.
Why and how the real SEO and Internet professionals make their living when everything is already done and simple to implement without their help?
What would real Internet professional do or ask on a first meeting This may help you spot a good and bad signs on a first meeting with your developer. You would want to ask him/her/them as many questions as you might have and be ready to share the following with them:
- What is your company all about and how do you conduct your business.
- Who are your buyers, what kind of product support do your company offer to clients?
- How did you business grow over the years and how is your company compared to the competition? Who is your competition?
- How successful your competition is in online and offline business and what your company has to offer in order to become better than competition?
If prospective developer asks at the end for a small retainer to conduct a business research - it is usually a good sign unless research have already been done prior to the first meeting.
Once the market research is done any developer who knows left from right would come up with at least one version of your Company Internet Business.
If your business is bigger than selling one or two items a day for under a hundred dollars - your prospective developer would probably come-up with the plan on making your online business as part of your office billing, shipping and accounting system in-place.
Based on your request/proposal developer would probably have the following list ready for you after the business research is done.
- Absolute and intermediate goals for every aspect of the project development with realistically outlined time frames
- Layout/logo design for your website
- Type of technology used for live site update/maintenance (if any required/requested) and how easy it will be to maintain in case other developer would take the project over in the future
- Goals set for website promotion with timeframes and responsibilities of the parties
- Timeframes and limits for office side implementation of the website
- Project timeline for online sales
- Contract for ongoing project maintenance (if required)
If you have any questions or would like express your opinion, please post your message below.
