Online businesses are meant to be profitable. Negligible infrastructure & operational cost, less manpower makes it even more interesting to prospective businessmen. It seems even Tom, Dick & Harry can also figure out a business plan and create a website accordingly. You won’t believe how a number of entrepreneurs are joining online businesses. However, many stumble in the mid road and run away from the ground.
Yes, this is not news, but a harsh fact.
Start ups can fail too:
Though failure rate does not make news, but it is a fact that substantial number of startups can’t get through the challenges this market presents. It is not just, because severe competition is there in demand-supply ratio or capital has been an issue to start in a big way. There are other potential reasons too that may affect their business plan. Unfortunately, entrepreneurs are so excited about their new business, they prone to make mistakes.
Let me tell you time or budget is not the constraint always. It is the planning, perseverance and adaptability that makes the most. Website development is the primary gateway to introduce a new business. And, most of the businesses fail to succeed in this step only.
Here are the kinds of wrong decisions or steps they consider due to ignorance:
1. Developing business website without having a clear idea on what and how revenue model will work. Just a month of competitor analysis and data collection won’t give you the exact value. The result could give you temporary solution, not the futuristic.
2. Inadequate knowledge on a how a business website performs. How to optimize web-space, web resource and then navigate customers is always critical.
3. Most of the time, a website developer is hired for design-development work and unfortunately the poor soul faces stringent deadline. This is the worst thing most of us do by default. The professionals don’t get enough time to explore the best options for you or guide you accordingly. All these essentials are done in a hurry.
4. Lack of effective discussions with the site designer, insufficient reviews on website model, website layout and navigation structure worsens the situation. Every good website follows a life cycle and a revenue cycle. Deciding on those require time and effort which many modern entrepreneurs are reluctant to invest.
5. Once the website is ready, people tend to keep it as it was. No action, no communication, no activities, no monitoring, no major maintenance make the task even difficult.
6. Without planning on how the website may bring them customers, they go for offline advertisement through newspaper, magazines, etc. They just plan a budget to spend on different media as much possible. It seems that a fixed media buying process has been taken for granted. No research on which media will work as per his business segment, how the media will help his business reach the right target audience – are dangerous.
7. Going by tradition may also prove wrong sometimes. They interpret all business success from the same angle which is not. Each has their own way to represent and earn profit. Your website needs references from outside, so just depending on conventional display ads may not work as expected.
8. Lack of basic knowledge on website marketing, SEO, ad distribution, website KI, SMM also adds to the damaging effect. It is evident that these businessmen have minimum idea about free promotional tools and applications available online. So there is no optimum utilization of resources.
Recommendations:
To be a successful entrepreneur, you need to be smart enough in planning and hunting quick and easy resources. In Online business there are various ways you can do mistakes. It is better you apply the best of your knowledge and ideas on to it.
In my next post, I will discuss about how to avoid the common mistakes these entrepreneurs do. Till then keep following this blog and post your valuable comments.
Ritik Singh
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Sarah Williams
Rachita Kotian