6. Your web developer should design website to display properly on all screen sizes. (800 by 600 pixels and 1024 by 768 pixels are most common screen size, while 1280 by 768 pixels, 1280 by 1024 pixels are least common)

7. Insist your web developer go over in detail their contract as well as exact details of your needs, before they begin working on your site.

8. Insist on your web developer keeping you abreast of every milestone accomplished, decisions made and unforeseen changes.

9. Hosting does not have to be expensive, and a reasonable hosting fee should start at approximately $6 per month.

10. Insist that your web developer offer a website maintenance package. If they design it, they should be willing to maintain it.

It is very important that before you sign on dotted line, don’t be afraid to ask questions. There are no stupid questions, ever. A hasty decision can cost hundreds, even thousands of dollars. Designing a website is like a KISS, Keep It Simple…Seriously!

From Brick & Mortar to Online Business Ventures – Doing it Successfully.

The next problem seems to be businesses making jump to online arena. Once again, small mom and pop type shops starting on net with limited budgets take to free hosting services to get a web site online while attempting to increase market share. When done appropriately, this idea can help boost sales, but done incorrectly, it only helps eat away at profit margins and helps ensure failure. When doing business on internet, nothing beats having your own custom domain. You won’t get that from most free hosting services, and worse, many free hosting services place ads throughout your pages to help recoup costs of free services they provide you. In business expenses grand scheme, domain name registration is inexpensive. Many hosting services are also inexpensive. For as little as $10.00 and $20.00 per month, you can have a registered domain, and paid hosting, which allows more flexibility than free hosting services. When I speak of more flexibility, I talk about ability to run automated scripts and possibly sell ad space to other businesses. That’s a critical requirement for membership sites and any business owner wanting automation scripts to make business marketing easier.

Customer Composition & Continuing Education Process – Keeping Educated on Market & Consumer Trends.

Another area where most businesses fail is failure to continue learning about potential customers. Even if you develop good marketing materials, do all planning, and continue to increase visitor volume, failure to track their demographics and trends can eventually lead to missed trends changing visitor make up, and these trends could make offerings outdated. If that happens, you will watch your sales begin to drop off and any affiliate programs you promote could start to suffer. Keep an eye on web site logs and track visitor clicks, or even better; find ways of gathering visitor data through polls and questionnaires on your web site. Ask them direct questions and watch feedback. This information is invaluable when tailoring your ads or deciding what affiliate program products and services to promote. Find some free offers on internet and offer links to them to any visitors taking time filling out your polls or questionnaires. Just ensure freebies are valuable to your visitors and you will increase chances of gaining direct response information from them. Take for example a scenario where you want to offer another product or service, but that product or service will take some extensive time to implement and produce. By placing polls about product or service features and asking visitors direct questions about their need or lack of need for it, it could help you avoid wasting time and resources on products or services that aren’t going to sell. That’s just one example of how powerful information is when it comes to your business success. Use common sense, ask questions, and keep your ears and mind open. Through direct response polls and questionnaires, you will ensure future business success.

The Know it all Complex – Refusing to Accept Change.

Another time where businesses fail are when owners think they know everything there is to know about it. Let me tell you something, time is never ending and always changing. Time marches on, and those choosing not to march with it get left behind. That is what happens when you think you know it all. Time marches on leaving your business behind, and it fails. No matter if you’re in business for 25 years or are just starting out, there is ALWAYS something to learn from it. Whether it’s learning your visitors’ demographics better, learning which ads draw more attention, or learning new and creative ways to market your business, no matter how much you THINK you know, there is ALWAYS more to learn. Not only does time march on, but people change, and so does consumer market. Failure to track these changes through online information gathering processes or paid services will surely cause your business to falter and possibly fail. Running a business is a constant learning process. Lean to continue your adult education and you help ensure your future business stability and success.

Biting off More than you can Handle – Knowing When to say When.

The last reason I will mention in this article is business owners who try doing too much. You can’t be everything to everybody. You have to pick an area that maximizes your talents and downplays your weaknesses. Today, more commonly referred to as niche marketing, is where you learn to fine-tune your marketing target to increase business success and sales. Running a business requires us to wear many hats. There’s accounting that needs to be done, marketing that always needs improvement and submission to effective advertising mediums, customer service, web site design and promotion, writing content, and list goes on forever. One-man operations require an almost exhausting amount of time and commitment to get work done that needs done. If you don’t quickly learn your strengths and weaknesses, you soon become so overwhelmed when adding more tasks that you could suffer from shut down. Shutting down won’t accomplish anything, and your business could very easily fail. Be careful of this, as burnout is quite prevalent amongst business owners. By knowing your strengths and carefully evaluating projects before you implement them, you will know when you can still do it yourself, or if you need to think about hiring some help.

There’s a lot of money to be made in self-employment, but only by taking steps to ensure your business’ future. Educate yourself as much as possible while not being stuck on knowing every detail before you act. It’s better to do something than sit and do nothing while your business begins to falter and fail. But by taking proper precautions, you could save yourself from falter and possible failures before they happen. The best bet to running a successful business is doing research, write plans, create a credible list of information resources for future questions, and track your visitor demographics identifying your customers in as much detail as possible. Through planning for possible problems, you have answers to fix problems as they come up while avoiding potential business failure. Remember, failing to plan means planning to fail. Put in time and research ensuring you know as much as you can about your business and its operations. Know how much it costs to generate a sale and know whom those sales will come from. Find out how much it takes to run a business in your market and kind of profit you can enjoy. Knowing all this information will help ensure you have proper mishap prevention plans in place ensuring your business future success. Until next article, happy business operations and my wishes for your greater business success and growth in 2005.