Preparing Your Business

When you begin to plan an Internet site to develop your business, it is just as important to spend time in the planning stages as you would for a storefront operation. I mention this because I have met several people this summer who made this mistake. Just because it is cheaper to start an online business than a main street, location does not make it less of a business.

You build successful businesses on the solid ground of research and planned implementation. Few shortcuts will allow you to ignore these necessary steps. Following a hunch or a feeling will usually lead you into a failure that costs you the resources you started with.

Fortunately, we have an excellent resource in this area that I encourage all potential owners to utilize. The Oklahoma Small Business Development Center located on the Carl Albert State College campus is a good place to het help with all your business needs. The OSBDC can help you avoid making costly mistakes and connect you with the information you need to make informed decisions.

Researching your market is just as important as deciding which shipper you will use for your order fulfillment. If you who missed the Women in Agriculture & Small Business Conference & Trade Show at the Bob Lee Kidd Community Center in June, you missed a very good business resource. One of the presenters was Jason Harvey with the Oklahoma Agriculture Enhancement & Diversification Program. The Oklahoma Department of Agriculture runs this and it is designed to help add value to agricultural products and increase revenues for rural Oklahoma. This program stresses research and planning to create new jobs in our communities. There are grants and loans available for feasibility studies, marketing and product development. There is an emphasis on creating new and innovative ways to market products.

The Internet is one way to market your product that may have lower start-up or overhead costs. A strong advantage is the ability to track very specific information about your potential customers and use this information to create new marketing strategies. It is possible to find out how much potential demand there is from Internet customers before you create a website and exactly which search terms they would use to find what you have to sell. This information can allow you to have a strong action plan built on research, not hunches or feelings. Once the website is operational, strong analytics programs can help you define future strategies by providing insights into what more you can do to turn visitors into customers.

(Mike Myklin is an author, speaker and ecommerce owner who can help your business get more value from the Internet. You can reach him at http://www.myklin.com/ where these articles are archived.)

How To Waste a Website

This week I had to tell a local company their website was a waste of money. The designer they used had made almost every mistake possible in creating their website. If you want to avoid this disaster here are a few ideas to discuss with your designer.

When someone registers a domain name for you, be sure that you are listed as the owner. Your designer should be your administrative contact, not the owner of the name. It is very common for designers to claim ownership when registering client’s domain names. You often do not find out about this until you try to move your account somewhere else. You can check your ownership by looking up your domain registration with a free service like Domaintools.com.

Sometimes a designer will lock the domain, which means you cannot move it away from the listed servers without their permission. Locking a domain does make sense but there are better ways to protect your website without being held hostage.

Broadly speaking, the web is based on html code. All the pretty pictures, sounds and movies that you see are interpreted by programs that allow you to see the pages or hear the sounds. Websites can be designed using flash and this is a common way to create very engaging visitor experiences. However, before your visitors see your website, the search engines must be able to understand what you have.

The company website I mentioned had no html code that could be read by the search engines. The only way you found the site was to type the name exactly as it was registered. If you miss-spelled it by one letter you saw an error message without any prompts for the correct spelling. The search engines could not help you find it because there were no code definitions for them to read.

When you design a website, you must keep your market in mind as you decide what to content to include. If you sell to wholesalers, your website must include content that is useful for them. Different areas can be aimed at different users but visitors must be able to find relevant material quickly and have a compelling reason to want to do business with you.

Finally, a website should provide a way for you to understand what your visitors want. You must also include ways for you to continue the conversation with them after they have left. If you ignore the marketing aspects of the website and fail to offer value statements to your visitors, you are not getting much value for your money.

If you need help finding out who owns your domain name or have questions about your website, you can write to me at mike@myklin.com for assistance.

(Mike Myklin is an author, speaker and ecommerce owner who can help your business get more value from the Internet. You can reach him at www.Myklin.com where these articles are archived.)