Lack of Business Plan Could Equal Doom for Twitter

Jul 102009
 

twitterhangingIs Twitter disappearing soon? I seriously doubt it, though they have yet to come up with a solid business plan. This post title is not far from reality though, and when you burn through 50 million like they have at Twitter with still nothing to show for it, doom is not far away. The reason for this post is not about how Twitter is hanging on by a thread, but how your site could be hanging on by a thread.

You Got To Have A Plan

One of the first questions I ask a client when building them a new site is “Why do you want a website?”

Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams of  Twitter apparently came up with the idea in a brainstorming session. They were looking for a new product idea they could develop. They did it, but what they forgot to develop was a plan on how to use it, aka make money from it. To me it seems simple for Twitter. Let everyone use it for free, and charge users that are more demanding to the system. An example of that would be to charge users with more than a certain amount of followers, or charge for users that tweet over a certain amount of times. Continue reading »

Causality

Jul 302008
 

Regardless on why you have a website, the term “Causality” plays a very important roll. The idea of “If you build it, they will come” has failed more than it has succeeded. A quote from Scientific Magazine in the July 2008 edition describes causality as this:

What is Causality?

Causality is the principle that events occur in a specific temporal sequence of cause and effect, rather than as a haphazard jumble.

Keyword in the quote here is “haphazard”. Applying causality to a website, the design of the site would be the formal cause. The effect is the what the visitor gains from the site. As a website owner, the cause is building the site, and the effect is the actions the visitors take on the site. Awareness of this is a  must when designing a site. It is also why having a business plan is so important for a website because in a business plan the effects are clearly defined. So should the cause.

By clearly defining the effects that you want for yourself as the site owner, and the effects that you want your visitors to experience,  your site design should become intuitive. Navigation will be concise, clutter will be eliminated, and the user experience enhanced. Design with a specific cause, and the effect will come!

Business Plan

Jul 282008
 

Do you have a written business plan for your website? I am guessing the answer is a big “No”. I’m constantly reviewing sites, and I constantly find sites that don’t even have a tag line. Think they have a business plan? I think not, but maybe the owner has one worked out in their head.

Keeping your business plan in your head is a poor platform at best. It’s too easy to edit. It’s good to have change and keep up with the times, but your site needs to be highly focused if you want visitors to know what your site is about. If you desire action out of your visitors, like making a purchase, it’s even more essential. Are you marketing without a business plan? That would be absolutely crazy.

Business Plans Do Things

If you have never spent the time to create a business plan know that you are missing out. Business plans do things. A common occurrence in building a plan is new realizations. Here in an example I like to use based on a road rage site I did back in 2004. I was spending my marketing budget by advertising on Google. It worked, I got visitors, but after studying my business plan I was able to recognize a weakness within that plan. It was expensive, and it didn’t produce long term visitors. It also rarely produced backlinks. I then realized that spending my marketing money on PR, and doing the occasional press release was far more beneficial. I received more targeted traffic, and I also received lots of backlinks.

A plan also helps develop realistic goals. Don’t be surprised if your expectations don’t drastically drop after doing a market analysis. Sometimes seeing that even the best sites in your niche don’t accomplish what you are dreaming of can be a major awakening.

Writing Your Business Plan

A business plan could or should take as much time as building your site. It should be a work in progress, and require regular reading if you are actively making adjustments to your site.

A simplified outline of a business plan:

  • Company summary
  • Services offered
  • Market analysis
  • Product or sites benefits, advantages
  • Marketing strategy
  • Sales strategy
  • Actual, and future target milestones
  • Financial plan
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