A website needs a sound business plan.
Success in an Internet business comes down to two main factors: being able to generate large numbers of visitors to the website, and offering products or services through the site that a significant percentage of these visitors will buy. These success factors may sound deceptively easy. But they're not. Given the millions of websites competing for visitors, you need to outline in your Business Plan extremely creative and innovative marketing strategies that will allow you to quickly and cost effectively build revenues for the Internet venture.
Instructions
1. Define your mission. In a single sentence, describe what kind of Internet company you want to build. A mission might be: to be recognized as the Number 1 Internet provider of information and resources about the home entertainment system industry. Define your mission broadly enough that it will allow you to build many potential revenue sources.
2. Design your business model. Explain the various revenue sources your web venture will have. Don't limit yourself to just one. You can market products, services, or information. Consider marketing affiliate products for commissions, your own electronically downloadable products like e-books and physical products like DVDs. Try to design your model so customers will purchase more than one item from you, and will be repeat customers.
3. Define your target market(s). Decide what demographic groups you want to target with your marketing and promotional activities. Describe why you chose these markets, and why they are likely to purchase from you.
4. Outline your marketing strategies. The heart of the Business Plan for an Internet venture is the marketing plan. Discuss how you are going to reach your target customers. Don't talk in vague generalities, such as "we're going to advertise on the Internet." Be specific about the types of websites where you will be advertising, and the form of advertising such as banner ads, cash per action, clickthroughs and text links.
5. Highlight the management team's accomplishments. As with any venture, having the right management team in place is critical to future success. Present a case that you have assembled a team with the right blend of skills and prior Internet business success to make this new venture a success as well. If you've taken a website from a few visitors a day to 10,000, make sure you include the specifics in your Business Plan.
6. Create financial projections. Build a revenue and expense model spreadsheet for at least the first three years of the venture. Make sure you use realistic assumptions that you fully explain in the financial section of the plan. The reader must follow the logic you used to create the models in order to have confidence that the numbers are attainable.
