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Gather competitive intelligence by researching "best practice" and competitors' websites to see what benefits and features they use that you may want to apply to your site. When you have finished your review of best practice sites and studied your competitors' site, answer the strategy planning questions at the end of this section.

"Best Practices" Sites - Start with sites that may not be a competitor to your business, but contain site benefits and features that you might want to borrow and apply to your eBusiness. For example, if you plan to offer online shopping and purchasing on your site, go to the web sites of successful online retailers - like Amazon.com, REI.com and LandsEnd.com - and see the features they have on their sites.When you visit these sites, pay attention to the content, design aspects of the site, and the functions it includes. Use this checklist to study and evaluate the site.

Competitor Sites - Next, take a look at the sites of your actual competitors. Complete the chart below:

Competitor	Key Content Features	Key Design Features	Key Site Functions	Features to Apply

Answer these questions to describe important site benefits and features you plan to incorporate into your web site:

What are the 3-5 content features and benefits I want to consider for my site?
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What are my top 3-5 design features and benefits?
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You probably don't have complete or "perfect" answers for Steps 1-4 yet - that's understandable. However, if you left any of those steps incomplete, then you need to stay within the planning stage before moving to Step 5, Create Your Preliminary Project Plan. A successful project plan will be built from those key decision areas.

Identify how you will generate revenue from your Web site. There are several basic approaches to producing revenue on the Web:

Direct Sales: Your revenue comes from selling products or services. Profit comes when you can sell your products at your target price. The cost to design and operate your site is figured into your overall expense figure.
Indirect Sales: Your revenue comes indirectly from your site content through sales of advertising space. This approach works well when your web site offers appealing content that attracts visitors. By attracting a large number of visitors and a desirable visitor type, you make your site appealing to advertisers. Your advertising rates will depend on the number of visits your site gets and the type of visitor.

Another variation of the indirect model is to provide space on your site for associate buttons. Associate programs pay you a referral fee when someone leaves your site, goes directly to their site and then buys something.
Licensing/Selling Content: Your revenue comes from licensing or selling your content to other sites. "Content" can be feature articles, weekly columns, polls, etc. -- anything that keeps people connected to a site. Good content makes a site "sticky" - meaning that people stay on it and don't click off to another site.

Example: Travel sites sell air, hotel and rental car tickets - they want visitors to stay connected (which ups the likelihood that make a purchase), so they provide content that is related to their products. These sites lease weather reports, and they create affiliates with hotels, airlines and rental car agencies. These added benefits create repeat visitors because they can find everything they need at one site.

Answer these questions to define your e-biz revenue model:

What is my eCommerce strategy for making money on the Web?

Now that you have a website up and running with a decent traffic, identify how the virtual office or store will add benefit to your product or service. Internet benefit is created in two ways.

Using the features of the Web as part of your product or service.

Example: eLibrary.com created a reference information service using the Web's ability to create access to numerous resources across the Internet.

Using the Web to enhance the existing benefits in the product or service.

Example: Amazon.com sells books. They have enhanced the existing service of a traditional bookstore by adding the benefits of "always open for business", online reviews, a huge searchable inventory, suggestions for similar books, and delivery to your door. Millions prefer Amazon's Internet benefit to a trip to a conventional bookstore.

Answer these critical questions to pinpoint your Internet benefit:

How does the Internet add value to my product/service?

If my product/service can be acquired through other than online channels, how does using the Net provide my customers with a more attractive (faster, more convenient, easier) way to shop and buy?

Typical eBusiness Goals	Objectives
Promote my business on the Web.	Within 30 days, be able to communicate my company name, its strong points, products and services, benefits, prices, customer list, etc. to new customers & prospects Grow my business by increasing non- local sales Build national web presence on-line so that I am getting 25% of total sales from outside my local sales area within 90 days Sell products on-line on a 24/7 basis Achieve 15% of total product volume through on-line sales within 120 days
Reduce cost/dependence on printed product information.	Cut my printed materials costs by 75% by referring people to my web site
Improve customer service.	Provide instant information to prospects and customers by making it possible to view product descriptions, FAQ's, price information and applications information directly from my site
Prospective customers can experience my product on-line.	Provide an interactive product demo on my site that sells my product Provide customer case studies and testimonials that show how they used the product and the benefits they received.

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Search Engine Optimization: Your Key to Online Success

Search engine optimization is all about taking your site to the top of search engine rankings. Everyone wants and has an online site about any goods or service they are offering. If you want to sell something to the public, you must have a website. Everybody is busy these days, and consequently does not have the time to actually go to stores to check out and buy any goods that they need. The internet has become the market place to sell anything. Quick and easy accessibility is what people look for in the internet. Internet is the best source for you to sell your goods and services.

Ok, so now you have a site that has all relevant information about your business, but many people do not know about your site. This is where search engine optimization is needed for your site. Search engine optimization is the different methods that can be used and implemented for popularizing your website. Yes you need to tell everyone that you have a site and tell them really well. Search engines are the key if you want to be successful in online business.

There are different things that can be done for Search Engine Optimization of your site. Link building is the most popular and the most effective means for popularizing your site very quickly in the web. For link building it is vital to search in the web and find out those sites that deal with similar product to yours. This means that your link will be place on those sites, and visitors can actually come to your site through that link. One way inbound links are more beneficial for your site.

Blogging is another great way for you to become visible in the web. The key to blogging is to write quality blogs about different elements of the product that you are selling. If your blogs are very well written chances are there that your site will become very popular. People will even start talking and discussing about your blogs in forum. Imagine how much of publicity you can gain form this. So simply go ahead and start blogging and increase the popularity of your site.

Search engines are the kings in the web. So if you want your site to be successful, you have to get recognition from search engines. For this you need to get high rankings in search engines. Search engines give rankings to websites based on different criteria. Search engine spiders also known as bots crawl different sites to find out if they are meeting all search engine requirements or not. Based on this websites are given rankings by search engines. And it is this ranking that determines how your site is faring in the web.

This is not all: there are many other reasons for you to gain popularity in search engines. A study has shown that most of the people using the web take the help of search engines to find information about any thing in the web. So anyone who is searching for information about your product and service, your site will be listed at the top of search findings. This means visitors will automatically come to your site and buy your products.

Before you embark on any search engine optimization process for your site, it is very important for you to know what you are exactly doing. Try to gather as much information as you can about any method that you are undertaking for the purpose of search engine optimization of your website. This is your site and you must know everything related to your site. After all your business performance depends on this.

“Secure Your Success By Seeing Your Vision”

Robert Warlow

Small Business Success

Speak to any successful entrepreneur and he will tell you exactly where he and his business will be in 5 years from now. Successful business owners know exactly where the business is going and what they have to do to get there. They have vision. They can see the future. Having a vision is having a clear view of what the future will be like, what it holds for you. A vision will provide you with drive and, if strong enough, a passion.

A vision will give you a stronger and fitter business. No time is better to set a vision than at the beginning of your journey to self employment.

So how can you start constructing a vision?

Dream Big

All visions start with dreams. Sit down, relax, and let your mind wander. Don’t hold back and let all your limiting beliefs stop your thoughts. Imagine your biggest dream for you and your business – no limits; nothing can hold you back.

Be forward thinking and take yourself forward 5 years from now. Where are you now? Are you still in the same place or somewhere bigger and more exotic? Who are your customers? How much are they spending! Don’t ignore your customer; what does he want you to achieve? The idea is to set your vision and then work back from there to achieve it.

Use the power of your subconscious mind to lead the way.

What Does It Look Like?

Now having your vision in place, what should it look like? Remember, your vision has to be motivating enough to keep you going through the dark days (and there will be plenty of those!). So, your vision has to be powerful, compelling, bold, inspirational and motivating. It has to be strong enough to make you jump out of bed in the morning even before the alarm clock goes! Does you vision do that for you?

Do Something About It

Unless you take some action, your vision will only remain a dream … in your head and nowhere else. Once you have a firm idea of what you want to achieve so you can build your ideal future, set clear steps and goals to guide you. A dream will get you nowhere without action. As a man called Black Elk once said, “A vision without a task is a dream. A task without a dream is drudgery, but a vision with a task can change the world.”

If you are just starting out, put some time and prepare for your future now … construct a vision!

© Robert Warlow

Small Business Success