2. Table Of Contents: Just like a book, Business Plan has a Table of Contents for quick perusal.

3. The Company: This is a more in depth outline of company, what it does, how it’s organized, it’s goals, direction, history, tasks, profits, etc.

4. Products and Services: An in depth description of product or service. Basically, exactly what your business will be offering for sale.

5. Production: What is necessary to produce your product or deliver your service. This includes raw materials.

6. Marketing: A detailed marketing agenda including what and how you will advertise. You can take this straight from your marketing plan outlined in Marketing Section.

7. Competition: A complete evaluation of your competition and how your business will meet need in a different or better manner.

8. Obstacles: What hurdles will your business be met with? How will these hurdles be overcome? 9. Finances: Cost of set up of your business as well as day to day financial needs for overhead and marketing.

10. Milestones: This is future time line of your business.

These are basic elements of building your business plan. Begin by making a rough outline for each section and then build to a finished product. There are many books that offer guidance for these important planning steps. When you take time to plan your business your business will reward you with a long future of financial stability. So jump in and make your future happen today.

I have latest versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape running. That is, latest what work. (I couldn't get IE 5.5 to stop locking up my new system. And I don't know of anyone who has Netscape 6.1 running yet; I couldn't make it work.)

To exclude any visitor because of way a site is put together or technology used, makes no sense to me at all. A small business can not afford this risk.

Let's Keep It Super Simple

Your site must seek to embrace all visitors, regardless of their software or hardware. So what is needed to make such systems work is a very simple recognition procedure. It might go like this.

When a visitor arrives, put up a page in straight HTML, without any bells and whistles that would break even older browsers. (My wife still uses Win 3.1 on a 486, and won't even talk of upgrading.)

Once page is loaded, try running a brief JavaScript to check for a cookie. If script fails, fall back and display only HTML pages. If script runs, but does not find a cookie, ask visitor if they would like a personalized visit about site. If no, forget it. If yes, get information, save it, and use it. And finally, given a read of a cookie, personalize as possible.

Will Bontrager , a top flight programmer, sees no problem in accomplishing above. Further, he has a plan for holding costs down. Use a standard database with all possible fields, all of which will not be needed by a given site. By holding to a standard format, great expense of a customized database installation is avoided. While Will did not put a price on it, a few hundred dollars might be ample.

With database in place, JavaScript can handle a vast array of personalization functions. If you don't want to get into writing this kind of code, libraries and code generators will provide you with workable code that can be cut and pasted into your pages. And, of course, there are people like Will, who will produce precisely what you need.

It's Past Time To Be Thinking

I ignored early announcements of CRM because there did not seem to be much of value to a small business. Which is area in which I and my clients work.

I see now, though, that there are some things that can be done in a simple, straightforward way. So long as we do not reject any visitor for lack of latest tools, we can make visit to our site more personal and more enjoyable for many.