What To Consider Before You Take Your Business Online!

Posted by Karl Foxley in Blog, Coaching, Search Engine Optimisation, SEO, Website Design

In this post I am going to share with you some important considerations you should look into before you take your business online.

Demand

Is there demand for your product* online?

Despite what you may have heard, not all businesses work well online. If you have worked with a website design company then you may have come across the typical website sales route where the sales-man overemphasises the golden opportunity of having a business website. The often quoted pitch is that a website can provide a great revenue boost for your business. This is true for some businesses but not for all.

Before you commit to taking your business online you should use Google to search for your product type. Are there people already selling your product online? Can you find similar products on eBay or Amazon? Are people actively bidding on and purchasing what you sell?

Budget

Although the Internet is amazingly cheap, it does cost money to get a business established online. At a minimum you will need a domain name, a hosting account and a website.

The good news is you can get started for under £100 depending on what website you go for. There are plenty of free services online but tied into these are your credibility. For example, some services provide free websites but you have to have it hosted on their server, meaning your domain URL will look like www.yourname.myfreewebsite.com. Free services often make up revenue by advertising directly on your website making this a less desirable option.

Websites are commonly built around content management systems (CMS) allowing the site owner an easy solution to updating and modify their pages without having to know any coding. This brings us to another important consideration, what content management system are you going to us?

Content Management Systems

Choosing a content management system will depend greatly on your needs. If you have a decent sized budget it may be wise to choose a website design company in your local area who will work to your desired specifications. This option can cost anywhere from £250 through to 5 figures depending on the size of the site and complexities involved in meeting your requirements.

You can use popular solutions such as WordPress to create an easy to use CMS at the fraction of the price. If you go with WordPress then I would strongly recommend you look into purchasing a premium theme as they are the best supported for customisation help. You can view some examples of top quality WordPress themes for the more business orientated site at Studio Press.

Goals

What are the goals you have for your website?

Will your website be more informational based with the aim of encouraging your online visitors to come and visit your bricks-and-mortar store?

Will you want your website to be a catalogue of your product range that people can purchase using an online shopping cart system?

Having the answer to these questions will help you pinpoint the website layout and CMS that is right for you.

Site Management

Will you be have the time to manage your website yourself or will you hire someone specifically to do this?

This will obviously depend on the size and type of your website that you use. For example, an information type website with 5-10 pages is going to be easy to maintain and not require much input of your time. However, an online store with a high-turnaround of stock will need to be updated on a regular basis and need a higher level of time committed to its management.

Optimisation

This is an important factor that must come into play. Just because you have a website does not mean you will have visitors. You will need to have your website optimised for the search engines. Website design companies often up-sell or include search engine optimisation services in-house but, and I must stress this, not all designers understand SEO as thoroughly as a specialist in SEO.

You will have to look into what will work best for you and your situation but hiring a dedicated SEO consultant to work with you can dramatically improve the level of targeted leads your generate from the search engines and how they then go on to convert into customers while on your website.

Deciding to go online is a big decision for any business and it is one that should be made with a clear understanding of your market, your audience and your needs.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

Handy resources:

1and1 Domain Registration

Host Monster Website Hosting

WordPress.org

Studio Press Premium WordPress Themes

Magento Ecommerce CMS Platform

About Karl Foxley

Karl Foxley has written 127 post(s) for FMS SEO.

Karl Foxley is an SEO Consultant, Internet Marketer, Small Business Advisor and Co-Founder of FMS SEO. Karl seeks to make SEO and Internet Marketing jargon free for the every day user.

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