What Is The Point Of shrewdies.net?

Trying to get this site relaunched has, as usual raised many interesting topics.

Topics typical, no doubt of the web business owner who tries to cover all aspects of building a site.

After a few days of tinkering with technical aspects of WordPress and its extensive collection of plugins and themes, I have come to the conclusion that I’ve lost the plot!

When I launched this site, I was clear that I wanted it to focus on the technical aspects of running a business. The aspects that a large enterprise would handover to the IT department. The aspects that a one man business either learns, or farms out to a website developer and hosting service. My strategy was to document the development of websites as I built them, including documentation of this site.

I set these objectives over 2 years ago and last worked on the site over 18 months ago. The plan is out-of-date, and it is seriously hampering the relaunch. It proves the strength of a well laid-out plan.

So before you start on building your web business, make sure the plan is set. If you’ve been running for a while, make sure the plan is current.

The planning process is beyond the scope of this website. I’ll be back soon with the pointers to the best way to build a plan. In the meantime, heed the warning. If you work for yourself, don’t start building the website without a current web business plan. If you are designing and building a website for a client, do not start without their current web business plan.

One exception is the very basic site for existing businesses. It needs a privacy policy and a contact page. Most web businesses also need to encourage feedback and interaction beyond simple commenting on your own articles. Therefore, a forum is important, and you can start one with a general group and a ‘Please Help’ forum. I’ll cover this in more detail in the next post.

Without the plan, you simply end up with a series of articles that do not relate to each other. Categories are so vital to making a website work. As time passes, you can tweak them. But when you don’t do it, or leave the plan unmanaged for 18 months, you end up with this – a rambling out of context article that you cannot even categorize.

Pitfalls and problems might be a good category to add – but never add categories on-the-fly, unless they are in the web business plan.

Tags: pitfalls, problems, web business planning