#1 – Define your WHY

The online business journey is more like a marathon than a sprint. Is it usually a lonely path in uncharted territories for most business owners. It is a good idea to define your WHY in starting an online business.

Your why is what you will go back to when you are in periods of doubt. When your launch did not bring the numbers you expected. When you are not sure if you made the right decision.

Your why is what is at the core of your decision to become a business owner and enter the world of online business.

My WHY is my love for freedom. I want to be independent and not having to work for someone. I want the freedom to have a business without earning ceiling. I want flexibility in my time and in the way I am doing business. I also want to have the space to develop my ideas and present them to the world.

Now it’s your turn: What is YOUR why? Write your answers down in your journal and review often

#2 – Gain Clarity

Clarity = Power. You need to be extremely clear on how you want to build your online business. If you want to create any result you need to know exactly what you want. You need to be clear on your own vision. What do you want from your business? What lifestyle you want and what outcome you want? Writing it down in your journal is also important as you can refer back to it to keep you on track. Be super specific. The more specific you are, the more able to are to envision it and take the necessary actions to bring your idea or concept to reality.

#3 – Know Who You Are

As much as a professional website is a window to your business, it is also a window to who you are and what you stand for. With the choices of words, colors, imagery your website speaks to the world in a specific way. This becomes part of your branding.

If you were looking for a clean definition of personal branding, then here’s one from Dan Schawbel, author of “Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future” and owner of PersonalBrandingBlog.com:

“A personal brand is what you stand for and what makes you special. [It’s] composed of values, a mission, and a positioning statement that depict what you do and who your audience is. [It] is an indicator for how valuable you are to employers and customers at every stage of your career.”

Be also very clear on your skills and abilities and how you will promote them within your professional website. If you are not sure, ask your friends and family to help you. Know what makes you unique and how you want to leverage it.

#4 – Meet your Ideal Customer

Your ideal customer is the person you are solving a problem for. A person who will be your wildest fan and who you want to work with. You need to intimately know your ideal customer in order to be able to speak to him/her in terms that they will understand.

Take some time to define this person. You may have met that person in real life. Go spend time together. Find out what their issues are and how they see the world. Learn where they spend their time and how they invest their money. Know what lifestyle they have and what would make their life easier.

It is crucial to create a very specific description of your ideal customer and know how they think in order to appeal to them.

Once you know your ideal customer on an intimate level, you will want to infuse what you know about them into your brand, your message and your offerings.

Defining your ideal customer and their habits and focusing on their needs is what is called a niche.

#5 – Build the right online business

What kind of online business do you envision? What business model do you want to have?

It is true that when we first start in the online world this question is hard to answer. The more you are clear on this, the better it will be to make a decision regarding tools and services to build or uplevel your professional website. Now keep in mind that your business will evolve and probably change.

The beauty of having an online business is that it is quick and easy to alter it.

Here are questions to push you to think about your online business model:

Do you want to sell evergreen programs?

Do you want to launch several programs a year?

Do you want to build a membership site?

Do you want to provide information?

Do you want to sell services?

And of course you may want to build all the above!

Having a clear idea about what type of online business you want to create will give you the opportunity to plan and strategize your professional website from the beginning.

If you are a small business owner or you’re just starting out and secretly wish you had an online business, working from home or dreaming about quitting your 9-5 job, you may think there is no benefit in having a professional website since you can do everything on social media. Or maybe you think you can’t afford to have a professional website, so you may get a free website and do it yourself or ask your friend’s son who builds websites on weekends.

Perhaps you’re in the generation that didn’t grow up with computers, you don’t use a computer so you think your customers don’t use computers either. Maybe you think if you are not tech savvy why bother with a website anyways. Perhaps you have been relying on word of mouth for so long that you are doing very well this way, why invest in a professional website?

Here are some stats: The new 2018 Global Digital suite of reports from We Are Social and Hootsuite reveals that there are now more than 4 billion people around the world using the internet. Well over half of the world’s population is now online, with the latest data showing that nearly a quarter of a billion new users came online for the first time in 2017.

More than two-thirds of the world’s population now has a mobile phone, with most people now using a smartphone. eMarketer estimates that non-voice time spent per day by smartphone users will have risen from 2 hours 18 minutes in 2014 to 2 hours 42 minutes by 2019.

Our online behavior has been changing with the rise of more affordable devices and data plans.

9 reasons you need a professional website for your business or side-hustle:

Reason #1: A professional website is the window of your business

People use the internet to gather information every day for any reason. That you are a local business or not, if you are not on the internet, someone else is and will get the business.

Finding out about your hours of operations, address, contact, or trying to find a solution to a problem, getting a menu, booking an appointment is all accessible via the internet nowadays.

You will want to have your business available virtually online where anyone can find you and contact you.

In addition to providing pertinent information, a website is also a window to your business where you can promote new products and services as well as explain, with all the tools available (text, audio, video, imagery, etc..), what your business is about and how it can benefit the viewer.

Reason #2: A professional website is always open for business

Your website is working for you 24/7. The online world is never closed and no matter where you are in the world, someone can access the information, services or products you have available at any time of the day.

Building your list, selling programs or products is no longer limited to working hours. Your professional website is doing this for you and without you.

Reason #3: A professional website enables you to target a wider audience

A website is available anywhere. The World Wide Web is available to anyone with internet access. That means your website can be viewed from anywhere in the world.

Brick and mortar stores product-based businesses can also sell to a wider audience with the help of an eCommerce store. Think of all the people who can’t get to your bricks and mortar store that you could sell your products to.

Service-based businesses can also serve anyone around the world. With the abundance of affordable communication channels, it is now possible to do business with anyone, anytime. A website makes it much easier to attract new clients in the global market.

Reason #4: Do business your way

With your website, you can do business however the way you want. You set the tone of who you are as a business owner and how you are interacting with your customers. You are free to imagine and create your online world and choose the business model that will attract your ideal customer.

Reason #5: No website means losing business

It is clear that not having a website means losing sales to another business. However a bad website is worse than having no website as it is promoting a bad image of your business.

Having a professional, polished looking website that functions easily and offers customers clear navigation, strong imagery, professional quality content and an overall experience that engages your customers enough to want to do business with you is key.

Reason #6: A professional website saves you time

Your website is also a place to educate your audience about your products and services that can be accessed anytime. You can also provide automated customer service via your website that would otherwise take time.

A vast amount of resources is available to your customer or ideal client anytime without your interaction. So you can invest your time doing what you do best.

Reason #7: You control your content and offers

You have the opportunity to make new offers, provide new and updated information, remove products, offer discounts at anytime. You can change the look of it with the push of a button and launch a new product in matter of days or hours.

Reason #8: A professional website saves you money in the long run

I have seen countless business owners believe that once you have a website, customers will come and buy. This cannot be further from the truth.

In order to be found on Google, you will need a robust SEO (SEO is a three letter acronym short for Search Engine Optimization. Search engine optimization about trying to rank higher in search engines.)

You also will need a way to capture your ideal customers’ emails to grow your list and have a way to convert those customers into repeat buyers.

If you don’t strategize your investment from the beginning, you will lose more money by having a designer redo the site and help you put the necessary elements in place so that you professional website generate leads and sales for you.

Reason #9: A professional website is not just a website

Yes, websites are becoming more user-friendly for a business owner to build their own website, and still look good. But in addition to looking good, your website needs to be the extension of your business and work for you 24/7.

Your professional website needs to be generating leads and sales.

You website needs to represent you as well as attract your ideal customer. You website needs to be more than just a website.

It needs to be a list-building & money machine.