Webupon

Image via Wikipedia

Whatever type of business your are involved in, the key elements of your business plan will remain the same:

Company Profile: A Description of Your Business

Describe what you are trying to do and why you are in business. Set out how you are going to meet the needs of your customers and identify how this will make money for you. Define the products and services you’ll be selling on line; describe your web store content and how the information on your website relates to the products or services you will be selling.

Marketing Analysis and Plan

Find out what is happening in your industry and whether the market for your products and services is growing. Think about how much competition there is and describe what you are doing that is different and better than your competitors. Anticipate whether there are likely to be major changes, such as new legislation that will affect how you run your business.

Define your target customers and then develop an advertising and sales plan to ensure that you reach them. How are you going to let people know about your product? Adertising? Direct mail? Are there blogs or specialist forums that you can contribute to? What about twitter? 

Find out about your potential customers and make sure that your advertising is appropriate in style content and delivery. If your customers have slow connection speeds, avoid complicated grpahics that will slow things down.Find out whether your customers respond to active marketing, such as newsletters or e-mail promotions.

Work out how many customers you want and how many you can handle. Describe what you are going to do to get new customers and to keep the ones you’ve already got. Consider affiliate schemes where existing customers are rewarded for generating new referrals. Create simple marketing material that they would be proud to send to other people.

Management Plan

Identify the key people involved in your business who will build, develop and manage your on-line business. Identify what will be done by staff (including yourself) and what will be done through contracts.(e.g. web designers).  Include any back-end systems such as order fulfilment, warehousing etc.

Describe how staff will be managed and rewarded and include information about systems for ensuring quality and managing performance.

Financial Plan and Assumptions

Research what you require to set up and run your internet business and find

Out the costs involved in start-up costs and in overhead costs. Calculate how far your existing capital will go and decide whether you need to look for additional funding. Project your expenses and estimate how much money you will require each month. Forecast income based on anticipated site traffic and the expected ratio of visitors to orders. Consider your pricing policy and make sure that you have the potential to make some profits.

Calculate how your costs and your income might change if there were 50% more customers, or 50% fewer. Be clear about how many sales you need to make your business profitable.

Development Plans

Think beyond what you are doing today. Think about how you will keep up-to-date with the changing market. Consider other products or services that you can develop for the future.