10 Easy Steps to Start Your Online Business (Part 3) | Draft Business Plan

3)      Draft a Business Plan

Introduction of Company

When you first start your website, you should present a brief description of your company what you hope to achieve in your business. This is to give your customers some information about yourself and to increase the credibility of your business. By telling your clients the nature of your business, it will also provide them with a clear picture on the type of products you are selling. This will aid in driving the desire traffic to your website.

Marketing Strategy

The next important thing to do is to promote your website. You should devise a marketing plan in order to increase the publicity of your website. The ultimate aim is to make your website known globally to enhance the profitability of your business. It will be ineffectual if you are unable to reach the mass market to sell your products. (Learn how to use your blog as a marketing tool to promote your online business)

Budget Planning

With your marketing plan in place, you should now decide on your budget and clearly allocate this sum to the area that you need to spend on such as monthly web hosting fees, buying of domains or monthly fees payable to email auto-respondent providers. This is to avoid overspending and allows you to have to a firm control on your business spending.   

Specific Goals Setting

Goals setting serve as a performance indicator for your business.

It is advisable to determine the total costs in starting up your online business and doing a calculation to find out the breakeven period based on your estimated profit margin and number of daily sales of your products. Do update your financial statements regularly to keep track of your financial performance.  

Other useful indicators include:

§  To have XXX unique visitors to your website by XX days/months/years

§  To generate XXX numbers of sales by XX days/months/years

§  To add an additional product to your business by XX days/months/years

§  To expand your business regionally/globally after XX years

Go back to Part 2 (Product Identification and Selling Techniques).

Go to Part 4 (Choose a Business Mode)