If you plan to start an online business, many steps are involved in getting it started and building out your online presence. For example, making critical financial decisions, deciding on location and business name, building a website, and much more are all steps to starting an online small business. Keep reading below to learn more about where you should start, and how to make sure your business gets found.
Write A Business Plan
It would be best to start by developing a solid business plan. This should include your business NAP – name, address, and phone number. Once you conduct a brief amount of research, you should have a good enough understanding of what direction you’d like your business to go.
Your business plan will work as a roadmap to teach you how to structure, run, and grow your business. Having a course of action will take you a long way. Building out your business plan should incorporate information such as:
- Describe the problem your business will solve
- How to establish your credibility as this problem solver
- Brainstorm how the product or service will benefit the user
Register Your Business and Apply for Permits
After finalizing your business plan and NAP, it’s time to make sure you solidify your place in the market. It’s easiest to register your business under your legal name, although you will have to apply through the federal government if you’d prefer to use something different.
These may be the most critical but tedious tasks. It is vital to keep your business legal by complying with local policies and laws. The licenses and permits you need for your business will vary by industry, state, and location. You will also have to ensure that you have an employer identification number (EIN). This is used to help you open a bank account and pay the applicable taxes.
Design and Build A Website
You can begin your web design process once you’ve nailed down your business plan, NAP, and secured the applicable licenses. Remember to keep it simple – your website gives you fewer than 5 seconds to grab someone’s attention. Building your website is about usability, practicality, and optimization. Here are some things to consider when building your website:
- Choose one or two fonts to use across your website
- Make your navigation clear and simple
- Only use graphics if they enhance your message
- Your website is your online storefront, so make it user-friendly
If you’d prefer to put this process in the hands of experts, contact Boston Web Marketing today. We have a website design team dedicated to building your website, and it’ll then be turned over to our SEO team for optimization across search engines.
Drive Online Presence with SEO and PPC
Pay-per-click and search engine optimization are two great tools that can be used to help boost your business’s awareness. For new companies that don’t have a robust online presence, we recommend utilizing PPC. With PPC, you will not only get immediate traffic, but you can also discover your highest-converting keywords for your SEO plan. You can use these keywords throughout your site to help your business rank higher on search engine result pages. SEO is a great tool to utilize for long-term awareness, as it slowly raises your presence for search queries. Using both will result in the most success for your small online business.
Get Started with Boston Web Marketing
Building out your small business is exciting but can be a daunting task without the right team behind you. At Boston Web Marketing, we can help you build your website and develop your online presence. Please get started by giving us a call today or contacting us at sales@getfoundquick.com.