1 – Website Design

It seems like almost everyone wants an online business. It's the newest and coolest dream. It's true, you can have an online business, your dream can come true, but you need to first make sure that you get started in the right direction.

In todays world of packaged software it is true that you do not need a web designer to get a website up. You don't even need to know how to program or how to install systems because many of the packaged software solutions make all of this dead easy. A word of caution, this could be a trap.

If you want to do a DIY website design job with a packaged software solution that is fine, but keep in mind that the software alone will not be what will make your online business work. Online business success is not achieved over night, there is much you must know and each bit of knowledge you acquire forms the basis for new knowledge, just like building blocks. You must learn about website design and usability in conjunction with SEO (search engine optimization) and understand the principles of good design before you embark on this type of project.

This means that before you get started you must understand what a good design is and what a bad design is. Having this knowledge before you start will make life much easier. It's easy to take a good design and make it  brilliant, but when starting with bad design you mostly need to scrape and start over. A bit of learning beforehand can help you avoid getting into that position.

Before you say to yourself, “But I can see a good website when I look at it.”, think again. Good website design is not only about color, background and images to make the site “look good”. Yes, of course the web site must be appealing to the audience and appropriate, but good design, includes navigation, overall site layout and general site architecture.

In other words you should have a logical map of what you are about to build that takes into consideration both your users and the search engine robots that will index your website. An online business is about users, this is the reason it is why it is called "online business", a business without customers is really not a business.

2 – Wrong products and services

This is mistake number 1, but because we are writing about website mistakes we started with the website itself. However an online business, based on a website that sells products and services starts with market research not with a website.

You see, most failures in the online business industry are as a result of lack of market research. One person wakes up one day and wants to sell something online and starts a 1000 meter sprint.

Here's the dope ... If there are no customers for that product, then the business is going to fail no matter how good the design or SEO or anything else is.

The first ingredient for a successful online business is to sell the right products and services, which have quality to a market with lots of people that wish to buy and are actively looking to buy those products and services. You may want to read that again. They are actively looking to buy. This is important because if someone is looking and you are doing a good job at SEO and internet marketing they are likely to find you, but if they are not looking, no one will find you because no one is actively searching for solutions related to your products and services.

To avoid this fatal mistake one must do first market research, lots of it. If you find a market with customers you will sell stuff. You may need to work on your marketing strategy and SEO and other things, but you sure that you will be likely to sell your products and services. As you get better at SEO and online marketing and learn how to tweak your presentation or offering, you will sell more products and services with time.

3 – Internet Marketing

As we said before, if you find a market or market niche with people who want to buy, all you will need to do is work at this.

The third mistake is putting up a great site that has no internet marketing support or any other type or marketing. In the past there was a great impression that you can build it and “they” [the customers] will come. After the dot com doom and gloom, reality hit home. You can build it but they won’t come, because you need to market it. Customers need to know you are there, to go to your site.

Hence, the third mistake is not marketing, or not marketing correctly to the right audience,  and sometimes just not marketing enough.

Going back to the beginning to put the picture together, you first need to find a market that has clients/customers, then you need a good website that is designed correctly and then you need to work on your internet marketing to match with your audience.

Remember online business is a business and, just like any business, it needs effort to get it to succeed.

4 – Your Website Content

I think this has been said on the internet probably a billion times: fresh, original, great quality content brings people and then ensures they come back again.

There is no real shortcut to this. You build content slowly and surely. That is also the reason why it is important to know your subject matter, which brings us to the next important point.

5 – Know thy Online Business Products and Services

You may have heard that you can make millions online by selling stuff and you really don’t need to know much about the product you are selling.

This could be true in the right context. So let’s deal with this in the right context. The right context is when you are acting as an affiliate and you get the content and everything else (such as sales pages and the products themselves) from the source to which you have become an affiliate to.

But even then it is not 100% true as you will need to build some content and then you will need to know what you are writing about.

The next situation is when you build your own site. Yes, you can outsource the writing of the materials if you know nothing about the niche you are in, but then how will you know if that material is good or bad? Well, the answer is ... you won’t.

This might put your site at risk. If people find out the material is not reliable you will get a bad name which won’t enable you to sell more products in the future. And you know how stuff goes on the net, it spreads faster than wild fire and bad news for some reason spreads even faster than good news.

This means that you need to know something about the niche you are in, enough to write about it yourself, or to identify bad content if you outsource the writing, enough to give briefs to writers to write.

Therefore, you need to know about the niche and products you are selling on your website.

To avoid such a big mistake and put yourself miles ahead, try to find a good market niche with actively searching customers that you already have some knowledge about. It will help you start building content by yourself, give briefs to writers and generate content more easily and reliably.

Online Business in summary is really a business like any other. If off line you would need to know about offline marketing you will need to learn now about internet marketing, website design, SEO (search engine optimization), but above all, before you get started, you need to find the right market niche to be in for yourself.