You’re starting an online business, so it’s important that you understand the Internet and all it has to offer. You should know by now that it’s a great learning resource and it can teach you an awful lot about how to run your own Web business.
The following are ten of the best and most useful Web sites available to you as you research your idea and learn how to piece it into a fully-functioning business. These sites will help you get your business up and running and to grow it from a small start-up to a flourishing online success story. Now get surfing!
In need of some inspiration? One of Dan’s Web sites, Realbusiness.co.uk, is the Web site of Real Business Magazine (www.realbusiness.co.uk), and it’s the place to start your journey. It’s full of great features, profiles and interviews with entrepreneurs from all walks of life. There’s an online forum where you can ask questions or express your views, a news blog (written by Dan), podcasts, vodcasts; everything you need to understand who entrepreneurs are, what they strive for and what you can achieve too.
Well, before you start your online business, you’ll need to do plenty of research. Take your knock-out business idea and consider whether others are doing something similar - is there room for your idea in the market? You must work out who will build your Web siteWeb site: Will it be you, a friend or a professional company? You also have to think about who’ll will host your Web siteWeb site, how you’ll promote it and how will you make it visible amongst all the other Web-based businesses out there.
Google.co.uk (www.google.co.uk) is your ally in this research. The great thing about finding reputable businesses to help you is that they are likely to have a higher Google rating (ie they will appear on the first page of a search on the Web site). A company providing search engine optimisation and online marketing, for example, should be easy to find in a Web search. If they are not, then they’re not very good at their job, and you should leave them well alone.
Google.co.uk’s great for finding businesses that care about (and spend money on) marketing; but it doesn’t guarantee 100 per cent that you’ll find your ideal service provider. You should always ask for customer references from businesses before you sign on the dotted line. If possible, you should also see if they are members of accredited bodies. For web designers the relevant body is the UK Web Design Association (www.ukwda.org).
If you are employing a company to do the design work for your web site, then make sure they are accredited in some way. Members of UKWDA must abide by a code of conduct, giving you an extra level of assurance compared with unaccredited companies.
Your one stop shop for information on the mechanics of starting a business is Business Link’s Web site (www.businesslink.gov.uk). The Web site offers hundreds of official guides that are updated constantly. It’s not just rules and regulations that are covered, but advice on how to start your business, how to maintain it and how to grow it. Business Link is funded by the Department of Trade and Industry, so you know that the guides are accurate and up-to-date. It’s without doubt the best source of practical business advice online.
Like Business Link, HM Revenue & Customs is a government organisation, meaning that the content on its Web site (www.hmrc.gov.uk) is trustworthy and chimes with UK rules and regulations. It doesn’t have the same number of guides as Business Link, nor does it offer as much advice. But it’s the ideal source of information on your business’ tax commitments.
The chances are you’re not a tax expert; you just have a good business idea that you think could earn you some money and perhaps develop into something big. But you do need a grasp of what you must pay back to the government; the amounts vary depending on the nature of your business and the amount of money you make. This Web site will tell you everything you need to know to get started.
In today’s ultra-competitive world, the customer really is king. Sites like www.play.com, www.cdwow.com and www.firebox.com force down the price of items that cost a lot more in high street stores. Their profit margins are pretty tight, but they shift so much stock that they can earn a tidy living for their directors.
Further more, price comparison Web sites like www.kelkoo.com and www.pricerunner.co.uk let consumers know exactly where they can find the cheapest brands. You have to be sure that you can either offer products cheaper (very unlikely nowadays) or that you offer a bespoke service and good customer care.
Apart from the sites listed above, the best way to assess whether your business will sink or swim is to check out the competition on eBay.co.uk (www.ebay.co.uk). Study your competitors like a hawk. What makes them professional? How much do their products usually sell for and how can you improve on the customer’s experience? If you can’t do it cheaper or better, then maybe it’s not worth doing at all!
Startups.co.uk (www.startups.co.uk) is another great information resource for people thinking about starting a business (of course, Dan would say that, because he’s partly responsible for creating it). Arguably the best thing about the site is not its daily small business newsfeed, or its large mine of ‘how-to’ guides. The best thing is its real life start-up stories and its busy online forum where you can ask questions and make suggestions to its many users, some of whom are lawyers, accountants and other advisers who give their advice away for free.
It’s vitally important to keep up with the times when you start your online business. There’s nothing worse than trawling through a site that feels like it was developed in 1996. Innovative super sites like Youtube (www.youtube.com), Google (www.google.co.uk), and Bebo (www.bebo.com) are distant cousins of your own site and you must pay attention to the jazzy new tools they keep producing.
Keep track of redesigns, new services and product ideas, and try to apply them to your own Web site. But instead of trawling around the internet all day waiting for sites to do something new, keep track through a news service like the Guardian’s Technology Web site (http://technology.guardian.co.uk) or one of the many blogs on the subject such as Techcrunch (www.techcrunch.com).
There are two ways of understanding where the bar is set in terms of quality products and services. As we explained above, you can check out the Web success stories and learn from them, but it’s also a good idea to learn from other people’s mistakes (this can be fun too!).
For tips on what not to do, take a look at Idiottoys.com (www.idiottoys.com). It’s a funny, yet sometimes very useful site dedicated to the worst ideas in technology. For more tips, take a look at www.thisisbroken.com, which gives examples of failed marketing campaigns, silly competitions and nonsensical promotional text.
Writing a blog (or web log) is a good way of keeping your Web site fresh with new, hopefully daily, content. But it only works if you’re any good at writing, or if you have something useful to say, otherwise who’s gonna want to read it? Luckily, there are some excellent blogs to help you gauge your own blog writing abilities. There’s Dan’s Real Business blog (www.realbusiness.co.uk), which needless to say comes highly recommended, and a host of others. Try political agitator Guido Fawkes’ diary at www.order-order.com, or marketing guru Seth Godin’s superb blog at http://sethgodin.typepad.com.