The prevailing notion that it's too late for small to medium-sized businesses to establish an online presence is a misconception. By learning from the experiences of early internet entrepreneurs, you can actually gain an advantage. Leveraging the lessons learned by e-stores over the past several years, you can launch your online business in half the time, with superior infrastructure and tools.
One of the most common mistakes new e-businesses make is underfunding their venture. Many businesses fail to invest the necessary resources into their online operations, often resorting to free hosting, amateur design, and free shopping cart scripts. However, the reality is that the internet, while providing access to a global audience, also exposes you to global competition. For instance, if you're selling books, you're not just competing with the local bookstore, but with giants like Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
However, with proper planning and the right infrastructure, you can minimize the long-term costs of running a successful online business. This includes streamlining design and information updates, inventory management, and pricing changes. One solution is to establish a database solution in conjunction with a series of programs to manage everything from displaying your site's pages to handling the ordering process. While this requires more time to set up, you can use a free database like MySQL to handle all but the largest businesses. The key is knowing when to use a free solution and when to invest in a paid one.
Another common mistake new online businesses make is failing to plan for long-term success. By conducting thorough research or hiring an outside agency to evaluate your project, you can save time and money. You should be asking questions like: What technologies are similar businesses using? What type of hosting solution will you need? Does the provider house the servers themselves or do they resell? Do they employ load balancing to prevent your site from crashing after a big promotion? Where should you allocate your ad budget? These are just some of the questions you should have answers to before diving into e-commerce.
Selecting a hosting provider can be fraught with pitfalls. It's easy to end up with a subpar provider or overpay for bandwidth, disk space, and unnecessary features. If you're planning a large enterprise, you'll need to choose either a dedicated server, which requires server administration skills, or high-quality virtual hosting. You'll need a provider that offers sufficient bandwidth (10 Gigs should suffice for all but the largest sites), ample disk space (100 - 300 MB), and excellent tech support. Also, inquire about their connection to the internet backbone and their uptime stats for the past few months.
Before you start designing your site, you should decide how it should function. Are you going to use static HTML pages or a database that serves pages to users on the fly? Both methods have their pros and cons, and you can also blend the two. Many sites use static HTML for their main pages and a database to drive the content or shopping sections of the site. Other considerations include whether to use frames, the extent of graphic use, and the scripting language to use. In our experience, the initial planning of a web project is the number one indicator of success or failure. Poorly planned sites rarely stay afloat for more than six months.
By investing adequately and planning properly, you can launch a new online business (or revamp your existing one) and be competitive in the marketplace.
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