Over the years I’ve seen many website owners give up building an online business because their websites failed to meet their expectations. Perhaps they paid 1000s of dollars to get a a website designed but forgot to promote it because they thought the traffic would come automatically or thought the traffic methods they used would generate the desired results.
I decided to put together this document to so you can avoid the common mistakes entrepreneurs and small business owners make when designing and building their websites.
PREPARATION
1. Set Your Goals
Not setting goals is like trying to find your destination without a map or GPS. Write down the goals of your business on a piece of paper and display them in a place where you’ll constantly be reminded of them. They should consist of long term goals (ie make $5000/month so you can spend more time with your family) and short-term goals (ie monthly, weekly, daily). The purpose of short term goals is to achieve your long term ones.
Create a timeline for the planning, building and marketing of your site. Without doing this, procrastination may take over your goals. Decide how much money you want to spend to create your site and how much you will invest for its promotion.
Set a target date for what you want your site to achieve – you can always adjust it if you need to. Make a goal for how many visitors you will attract to your site.
What percentage of these will be actual sales?
When do you expect to make a profit?
Resources
Check out this video Web Design Checklist: Setting Goals