A Practical Approach To Creating And Growing An Online Business

There is an incredible amount of hype about how to make money online. It can be very distracting and you can easily fall into the information overload trap and spend too much time and money learning how best to do business online. So how do you beat this trap especially if you are new to online business or web marketing? Woulden't it be good if there was an easy, practical and systematic way to think about how best to do business online?

As a Web Architect I have grappled with this problem many times and I have found that there is one simple way to look at doing business online that really helps me to focus in on what is important for my business. The key is to look at your online business as a set of processes that need to be structured correctly in order for your business to be profitable. This has two immediate benefits:

• first it gives you a way to think about your business, and
• second it acts as blueprint or checklist of what you need to focus in on to be profitable

I use a six process model when setting up an online business. Examples of these processes are Acquire Products and Website Promotion. With this model I can be sure that there is nothing major that I have left out and I can then focus on the processes that add the most value to my business.

Another important aspect of this approach is measurement. As a business owner you need to know how your business is performing so you will put in place ways to measure how each of your processes is performing. For example lets say that you use Google Analytics or Statcounter to measure the number of visitors to your website. If you are not getting the amount of qualified traffic you need to make a profit then you need to focus in on the Website Promotion process. This may mean that you re-evaluate the keywords you are using or that you need to look at alternative ways to promote your business and so on.

I hope that this short article has given you a flavour of how a simple way of thinking about your business can help you to improve it. I have coined the term Web Business Architecture to describe this approach because what you are really doing is architecting your web business for success.

About The Author: Tony Murphy is an experienced Web Architect with over 20 years experience developing processes, software and systems. He has worked on the web since the early days and has designed systems that are used by millions of people on a daily basis. He can be found at http://www.webbusinessarchitecture.com