Established
in a business? Unsure if the Web is the best way to go?….
Back To WEB/WAP Strategies Main Menu
Any
business no matter how well established will require business planning. It’s
the way you look at how you can achieve growth and stability. The basic concept
is to look at the business and ask yourself three simple questions:
- Where
are we now?
- Where
would we like to be?
- How
do we get there?
Although
the questions may appear simple, they can involve complex answers. Get a piece
of paper and write down your answers. You could for example say that you’ve
got a steady trade, but would like to expand by say 20% per annum, how you
achieve it is say expand sales force, get suppliers to give better discounts,
etc.
In
order to answer the third question more thought is required. You have to look at
what your competitors are doing, are they selling on the web? If so, are they
doing well?
Get
another piece of paper and write down all the things you consider are your
business strengths and weaknesses, then, carry out the same logic and apply it
to your competitors.
This
should give you some idea as to where you want your business to be, with a lot
more strengths than weaknesses. You should now be able identify what is termed
‘Critical Success Factor’ areas where you wish your business to enter
into base them on the strengths you’d like to have. Try thinking of say 4 or 5
key factors you want your business to excel in, then out of say 100 award these
factors a number you think is right. This
will show you the key areas you need to concentrate on.
From
looking at you critical success factors you should now be in a position to start
tackling the issue of actually achieving growth. No-ones going to know more
about your business than yourself, but achieving growth by looking at where you
would like to be is something we all too often forget to do. We all have ideas,
which we think our business should pursue, but until they are formulated into a
proper plan we will never be able to achieve them.
Going
on the web and establishing a market presence may be the way forward for your
business, or it may not.
MARKET RESEARCH
Find
out how many people are already in the same market, visit as many web-sites as
possible and enter in your business description for example ornamental
gardens (your area) UK and see what the search engine results are. You
should see several listed under the search engine results. This should give you
an idea of how many competitors are on the web.
Try to visit different as many different search engines as possible.
Type in your business area, you don’t need to specify your region if you wish to simply sell your products globally. Make a note of which search engines have the biggest results (you’ll find this as the comment search result 1 of xxxx). It may prove valuable later on when launch your own web site, because you’ll have an inkling of which engines have the most/least competitor links.
Visit
the sites the search engines show details about, these companies are your
competitors, see what they are like, making notes as to what you liked and dis-liked.
Keep a note of which sites had the most hits – you can usually find this on a
counter, this will show you which sites are the most popular. Keep this in a
file, it will prove useful when designing your own web-site.
One of
the first things we would advise any business to do, before it sets up a
web-site is to see if can have a domain name. In essence your domain name is
your electronic address on the world wide web. You may have an email address,
which is rather similar in nature, except a domain name is the way all your
potential customers can find your website.
The
problem you may find is that your business name may un-available on the net,
which is why we would advise registering your domain name before making any
further progress.
The table below
shows the different domain name options and what they mean. Use ‘.xx.uk’ if
you want to target a UK audience, or .com for a global audience.
|
Code |
|
|
.ac.uk |
Academic
Centre like Universities in UK |
|
.com |
Commercial
Business - Global Web |
|
.co.uk |
A
British Company |
|
.edu |
American
Educational Establishment |
|
.gov |
Government
Department |
|
.ltd |
Private
Limited Company |
|
.mil |
Military
|
|
.mod |
Ministry
Of Defence |
|
.net |
A
Internet Service Provider (ISP) |
|
.org |
Usually
a Non-Commercial Organisation |
If
your name is unavailable then try adjusting the title by adding a dash. Most
search engines have a domain search facility.
MAKE OR BUY?
Having
decided that your business needs a web-site, the next step would be to decide if
you are going to get a web designer in or, build the web-site yourself.
If
you have little spare time to spare, it would be advisable against building your
own web site, it would prove more prudent to ask a web design company, the
information for which can be attained from most internet magazines. From having
carried out your market research on the web, you should be in a strong position
to get the correct web-site designed for you. Give the consultants the
information you researched.
Should
have the spare time, and enjoy using a PC it would be advisable to build your
own web-site.
If
you think you are ready to build your own web-site, please return to the home
page and view the web strategy
section.
Back To WEB/WAP Strategies Main Menu