The Internet has made it much easier for people to work from home. There are many opportunities to work for established businesses, but others are starting their own online business. The startup costs are low since expenses such as office space and costs associated with such businesses are non-existent
Having said that, there are some important differences related to Internet businesses.
- Low Start-up Costs - When you decide to start a business online, you can do so with as little as a few hundred dollars and a good idea. However, don't be misled into believing that the Internet is an arena for instant riches with little or no effort. Nothing could be further from the truth. Like any business, it takes creativity, planning, money and hard work to be successful.
- Multiple Skill Requirements - Suddenly it's not enough to simply have a good product or service. To use the Internet effectively, you now need to have or be able to acquire skills in graphic design, web server technology, programming, and a brand new marketing medium, not to mention skills needed in multi-lingual translations, international accounting and legal issues. Fortunately, it is not necessary that you have all this knowledge yourself. With the right combination of strategic partners and associates, all of these skills are easily found, if you know where to look.
- Endless Marketing Possibilities - The opportunities and ease of fostering strategic alliances to bolster marketing efforts is unsurpassed on the Internet. The reason we see so many cooperative relationships between companies online is that doing so has become so simple and so profitable. The advertising industry has found itself with many more possibilities as well as significantly more competition.
- Easily Traceable Results - Another byproduct of business on the internet is that tracking potential customers as a group and visitor preferences is an ordinary part of business on the Internet. International Audience - Even if you do not think of your business as an international business, you must recognize that your visitors are likely to be from all over the world. You should consider whether or not you are prepared for international shipping and other transactions with countries other than your own. You should also strongly consider having your website translated onto languages other than English. The percentage of non-US businesses on the Internet has risen dramatically in just the past year!
Step 1: The Idea and Start-up Plans
This is the most important step of all! Without a good concept, a good product, good services or good content, anything else you do is a waste of time. So what should you look for here?
If you already have a business off the Internet (in the "real world"), this is the logical place to start. However, we do not recommend that you stop there. So many businesses launching websites view the Internet as just another place they need to advertise.
Their websites tend to be little more than what are known in cyberspace as "Brochure Websites." They simply replicate print advertisements and brochures. While these sites are not totally worthless, they fail to take advantage of the unparalleled opportunities afforded by the new technologies online.
The Internet is fast becoming the busiest business district the world has ever known. However, having a web site should be more than reproducing existing advertising. It should mean taking full advantage of the Internet's capability of interactive shopping and globally convenient access. Your web site can be the perfect showcase for people to obtain information about your company and products, an efficient way of communicating with your present clients, potential customers and an international marketplace to sell your products and services.
If you do not have an existing business, you should still look for ideas first in areas where you already have some expertise. If your current expertise does not seem to lend itself to an online business opportunity, your next plan should be to spend some significant time learning about the businesses already operating online.
Step 2: Licenses and Legal Matters *
When do you need a lawyer for your new business? In part, you need for an attorney depends on the type of business you plan to launch online. Typical business situations when most business, whether or not they are doing business online are the following:
· Incorporation - You may want to consider the legal benefits as well as possible tax implications of incorporating your business. If you do, you will need to contact one of the Business or Corporate Lawyers in your state. Another consideration when you are deciding whether or not to incorporate you new business is that, in general, your company will be treated with more seriousness by other businesses, banks and potential investors. Even if your company is small and even if you are working out of your home, you should look seriously at the tangible and intangible benefits (and costs) of creating a legal entity under which to operate.
· Patents, Trademarks and Copyrights - You might be surprised to learn how often intellectual property issues are related to conducting business on the Internet.
· Licenses and Contracts - Before you sign any contract, especially those written by another party, you should read it carefully so that you totally understand what your are signing. If you have any doubts about the legal or liability implications of any contract, you should ask an attorney to review it before you sign. If you set up an affiliate or reseller program on your website, lease server space with a hosting company, or hire a contract programmer or website designer, you are entering into contractual relationships, which may dictate your hiring a lawyer.
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· Internet Law - If you have heard what a great deal it is to buy expired domain names with other company's names and good active links to the domain name and then use it to bring traffic to your own business, then you also might want to visit some Internet lawyers who will be well-versed in the 1999 Anti-Cybersquatting Law. Even if you do not contact an attorney, you should read through this law carefully before buying domain names that may be legally protected by trademark or other intellectual property rights. Even an act as seemingly simple as selecting a domain name for your business can easily have trademark infringement implications. So before you spend money buying a domain name, building a website and promoting your new business, make sure that you will not run into legal issues in the future. The relatively small cost of seeking legal advice may save you much more money down the road.
Step 3: Your Domain Name
Although it is true (or so we have heard) that virtually every word in the English language is already owned by someone else, there are many clever ways around the problem of finding a good domain name. For example, if you are a travel agency and can't get travel.com (reserved in 1992), you might be able to reserve something like RWS-travel.com. You can also reserve a name with a .net, .org, or many other extensions, but the "dot com" is still the most well-known and accepted extension for business domain names.
You can purchase domain names in the secondary market, if you are not able to find the name you want through the domain registration process.
TopHosts, a recognized authority on web hosting, states the following:
Be the "master of your domain"
Query the Whois database (www.dnsstuff.com) to ensure that your company is both the administrative and technical contact for your domain. If your host is listed as both of these contacts, it is the registrant of the domain, not you. Unless you are the registrant, your domain could be held for ransom if there is a dispute between you and your host.
Query the Whois database (www.dnsstuff.com) to ensure that your company is both the administrative and technical contact for your domain. If your host is listed as both of these contacts, it is the registrant of the domain, not you. Unless you are the registrant, your domain could be held for ransom if there is a dispute between you and your host.
What should you do?
· If you have a Domain Name that you believe to be owned and controlled by your company, you should check to see how that domain name is registered.
· Also, Click Here, enter your company’s domain name (for example "centralvirginia.net - leave off the "www.") in the "whois" box. When you get the results, print and/or save them with your domain name records. Sometimes you will need to go to the registrar's website (enom.com, networksolutions.com or register.com or dotster.com, for example) if the detailed information is only available from the registrar. Most major registrars will have a "WhoIs" link or search box somewhere on their website.
Step 4: Selecting a Web Host
There are some basics you need to consider when selecting a web hosting company:
· Reliability - This refers to the percentage of time the hosting server is working and displaying your website. Unfortunately, these percentages are often reported only by the host company, so their accuracy should not be taken at face value. A good rule of thumb is that if the host offers a money-back guarantee, you should feel a higher level of confidence than if you are force to commit to a contract period even as short as three months.
· Access to support personnel - All hosting companies probably have support personnel. The important question is how easily can you get in contact with them and how soon can you get help with your problems. Look for a support page on the host's website and see what is offered. Test the service before you buy!
· Server hard drive space - An average web page is 10K to 50k. Pictures and other graphics usually range on size from about 1K to 25K. This means that if you have a 10 to 15 page website with 2-5 graphics on each page, you will need 120K to about 3MB (3,000K or 3,000,000 bytes) to save your website on a server. Even if you have a much large website with many more graphics, your website should be able to fit comfortably onto about 10MB of hard disk space. When web hosts offer you 400MB of hard disk space, they do so knowing that the vast majority of users will not come close to using all of that space. Therefore, in most cases, offers of more than 10-25MB of space are made mostly to impress prospective customers who really do not understand how much they need. It just sounds good.
· Allowable data transfer - When someone visits your web page, they cause data (web page code and images) to be transferred from the server hosting your web page down to their individual computer. If you have many visitors who look at everything on your web site, this transfer puts a strain on the resources of your host server. For this reason, limits are generally placed on the amount of "traffic" your site may receive before you are charged extra. In the example above, assuming the maximum web site size (about 3MB), and assuming 1,000 visitors per day viewed everything on your website once, you would need to transfer 30MB per day or about 1GB per month.
· Secure server - Many web hosts have this option available for an additional monthly fee. Secure (or encrypted) server space is needed if you plan to accept credit card information or other sensitive data on your website. If this data is not encrypted (coded so it cannot be read except by the intended recipient), then it can be viewed by others and potentially stolen.
· FTP or other access - There are many ways for you to upload your web pages to your server. However, the quickest and easiest is by using an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program.
· POP accounts - These allow you password-protected access to mail sent though your website email address. You may want to set up separate POP accounts for each major department in your company. Ask how many POP accounts your host allows you to have without paying extra.
· Included software - Some web hosts include no software; others include a large number of software tools to help you run your site more easily. Examples of programs, which you might expect to have available are: Auto-responders (to send automatic replies to your customers), forms for guest books, online orders and questions, search engines to let visitors search your web site, chat rooms, bulletin boards, online web site management, backup file restore programs, and (last, but certainly not least) shopping cart software.
· Server-side software - FrontPage extensions and compilers for running and using programs on your site. Many web hosts will not allow you to add any software to their servers.
· CGI-bin access - If you want to run your own programs on your website, you must have CGI access. Your CGI capabilities must allow you to read, write and execute on your server. Many hosts do not allow such access. This may not seem important when you first set up your website. However, as your site develops and interactive capabilities are needed (like quizzes, contests and surveys), you will find your company needing this ability.
· Domain name hosting - At a minimum you need your host server to allow you to have your own domain name. Since you can now register a domain name for only $15 per year, every company should have their own. Some hosts will allow you to have more than one domain name on your site; others will not.
Step 5: Design your website
Shortly before beginning to create a website, think about your audience and purpose for designing the site. You may find it helpful to write this information down so that you can refer back to it during the design process.
Decide which template, if any, you would like to use for your site. A template, which is a pattern or guide used in the construction of the website, can either be found in a published source or modeled off an idea borrowed from another designer.
Maintain a simple and consistent layout throughout the site. Make sure that features, such as a company logo and/or navigation menu, can always be found in the same place.
Think of the pages you need to have and organise them logically, by importance and by topic.
Consider who your audience is, and write accordingly. Refrain from using confusing abbreviations or jargon.
To make your text easier to read, break it into smaller sections, using subheadings and appropriate spacing to separate each the sections. The use of bold or different sized font in the headings can show the hierarchy and importance of the topics.
Avoid filling the homepage with too much information; instead, provide only crucial information and links to other sections here.
Well-designed, easy-to-read pages are visually attractive; you do not need busy graphics. Flash animation, bright colours, and over-powering graphics all can put off readers. Use simple backgrounds and make sure that there is enough contrast between the background and the text colour or else the text will be hard to read. Use standard HTML and avoid tags, features, and plug-ins that are only available to one brand or version of a browser, make your website universally readable.
Keep hearing and visually-impaired website visitors in mind. Caption video, transcribe audio, and include a note about accessibility. Though tables can be an efficient way of organising information, visually-impaired visitors who use a screen-reading program may not hear the material in column order.
Include interesting and relevant links. Make the link descriptive so that it may be understood out of context. For example, instead of writing "click here!" as a link title, say something like, "Information About Our Company." It is best to keep links away from graphical elements that may look like advertisements.
Keep a "mailto:" link somewhere logical and consistent so that visitors may get in contact with you, such as at the bottom of the homepage.
Be sure that you have avoided plagiarism and observed all copyright laws. Whatever you include on your website must be both legal and ethical.
Test your website. Make sure that all links work and that images appear as you want them to. Change your monitor settings to different resolutions, such as 640x480 with 16 colours and 1024x768 with 24 colours to guarantee that your website will appear as you want it to all visitors, regardless of what kind of computer they have. You may want to conduct some usability tests by having members of your target audience test the clarity and ease of and give you feedback on your website.
Publish your website.
Check links periodically to make sure they still exist, and listen to suggestions emailed to you by website visitors.
Don't waste the user's ink when printing. Use a separate style sheet for printing. If your web site has coloured background images, make sure to take them off. If your web site has white text on a black background, reverse it and put black text on a white background. More than likely, the user would not need the navigation bar, so if you have one you can take that off entirely. Also remove any unneeded images that just pretty up the page.
Make sure your visitors know that the site is active and being modified. Put a "This page was last modified at ..." text somewhere on the page. Keep your users notified.
Step 6: Advertising
When you want to get serious about spreading the word about your online business, you might find yourself wondering how to create an advertising campaign for your website. Advertising for your website is a mix between search engine optimization and ad design. Read these steps to find out how to get started on your advertising campaign.
§ Design some advertisements. Think of a consistent theme to model all of your ads after. Think of the current "Mac vs. PC" ads. They all have a consistent tone and setup, which helps make them both memorable and entertaining. For the Web, this can mean having a particular color scheme or logo design
§ Compare prices of banner ads. To get your banners displayed on relevant websites, you're going to have to pay some money. Choose an advertising network that will get you the most page impressions on the most relevant sites for the lowest price
§ Build inbound links. Inbound links from relevant pages are the best way to increase your search engine ratings and to increase your traffic. Create original, unique content that people will want to link to and allow other sites to syndicate it. Get involved with the forums and blogs from similar but noncompeting sites and work on a link exchange.
§ Look into pay-per-click advertising. This differs from page impressions, as you only pay when someone actually clicks on the link. "Google AdWords" offers one of the best programs for this.
Step 7: Making Your Site Interactive One thing you do not want to happen when someone visits your website is this: You do not want them to feel that they could have had essentially the same experience as if they had received your company literature in the mail. The Internet offers such awesome potential for creativity and multi-level communication with potential customers that companies have an obligation to take advantage of it. Email You need to give your visitors and potential customers something to do, some way to interact with you and your website. Of course, the minimum and most common way to do this is to provide an email address so you can be contacted by email either directly or through a form. Amazingly, some websites do not even make that small gesture. Online Shopping Another way to involve your visitors is to offer some or all of your product line for sale online. some companies shy away from selling online either because they think that the project is too expensive or that they need to put their entire inventory online. No true. Online shopping cart programs are generally very reasonably price (even free). Also, very few companies attempt to put their entire product line for sale online. If you give your visitors enough of a sample of your products, they will be able to contact you for others. Just offering your top-selling products will greatly improve your relationship with your online visitors. If you have products to sell it is imperative that you give them some way to either buy the product online or get more information in preparation to buying the product. For example, if you are selling homes, you can show pictures of the homes with contact information for each home, you can help potential buyers decide how much they can afford to buy if you provide an online mortgage calculator. Anything that can help individualize the experience will improve the response you get from your visitors. Surveys or Contests You can make your site interactive with online surveys or opinion poll, which give your visitors a reason to stay longer and perhaps look around. |  | ||
Auto-responders If you are not able to answer each email you receive immediately, a carefully-worded auto-response is significantly better than no response at all. Auto-response programs can also be individualized to include information (like the person's name), which was entered on a form. You never want to create the impression that you have an unattended website. This is the same reason it is critical that dated information is always kept current. An announcement for an event that ended last week is a sure sign that you are not actively involved with the visitors to your website. If you cannot keep your information current yourself, either hire someone who can or pay for a "streaming content" service. Clubs and other active content Depending on the content of your site, you may want to consider letting your visitors join interest groups or submit content to your site. We strongly caution against adding an unmonitored guest book, chat room or bulletin board, however. If you have anything on your site to which visitors can add their own words before you have a chance to edit it, you will find your site used by people selling their own products or services or to express any manner of thoughts that you will probably not want to be associated with your business. | |||
Step 8: Building Your Customer Base
Gathering information
Every website you own should include a form where visitors can give you their email address. Of course, only a small percentage of visitors will share that information, but those who do can be developed into future customers and repeat visitors. On the top of each page in this website you will see a form used to establish a mailing list.
Every website you own should include a form where visitors can give you their email address. Of course, only a small percentage of visitors will share that information, but those who do can be developed into future customers and repeat visitors. On the top of each page in this website you will see a form used to establish a mailing list.
Privacy statements
Every website you own should display your customer/user privacy statement. It is important that you keep your word to your subscribers. That is, if you say you will not sell or distribute your email list to others, your MUST NOT SELL OR SHARE these email addresses. If you respect the privacy and wished of your subscribers and provide useful information in your emails, your reward is that you will have repeat visits from them and will have a ready audience for important announcements you need to make about your business. Unless you are a news service, we do not recommend sending emails or newsletters to your list more often than once a week. Sometimes once a month is even better!
Every website you own should display your customer/user privacy statement. It is important that you keep your word to your subscribers. That is, if you say you will not sell or distribute your email list to others, your MUST NOT SELL OR SHARE these email addresses. If you respect the privacy and wished of your subscribers and provide useful information in your emails, your reward is that you will have repeat visits from them and will have a ready audience for important announcements you need to make about your business. Unless you are a news service, we do not recommend sending emails or newsletters to your list more often than once a week. Sometimes once a month is even better!
Tell a Friend
Offer incentives to your current customers to tell their friends and business associates about your site in any way that is appropriate to the content and purpose of your site. You may need to try several different incentives before you find one that works. An inexpensive, yet effective incentive is to give them more chances to win in a contest you are running for every friend they send to your site. Another is to give them some kind of priority access to your services. It might be something as simple as offering a 10% coupon on products they purchase on your site after they have sent a few new customers.
Offer incentives to your current customers to tell their friends and business associates about your site in any way that is appropriate to the content and purpose of your site. You may need to try several different incentives before you find one that works. An inexpensive, yet effective incentive is to give them more chances to win in a contest you are running for every friend they send to your site. Another is to give them some kind of priority access to your services. It might be something as simple as offering a 10% coupon on products they purchase on your site after they have sent a few new customers.
Step 9: Generating Repeat Business
Once you have customers using your services, you need to be creative about finding ways to keep the relationship going as well as encouraging your customers to send others to your site. This can be accomplished in many ways. Some examples are:
· Contests and coupons
· Business forums and discussion groups
· Affiliate programs
· Partnership/associate relationships
· Newsletters
· Instant chats
· Banner programs
