13 September 2010
Before settling on an idea and getting a website, read our top 10 tips for starting a new business. This comes from our own experience and should hopefully be a big help.

1. The idea / product

You can have all the money in the world to invest, but if you don't have a great idea or a product worth selling then you're not going to get anywhere. Before you setup your business, think about what people need / want and narrow the list down to something you could provide.

2. Competition

Having a great product to sell won't help if there's someone already doing extremely well with something similar. Ask yourself what makes your product stand out from that one? Price? Ease of use? Availability?
Despite software giants like Microsoft and drinks companies like Coca Cola there are still plenty of alternatives to the two, because of the variety and what these alternatives offer.

3. Investment

There's the age old saying, you have to spend money to make money, and while this is true it has to be put into perspective. Yes you may be able to get your business going with a cheap website and free advertising / company listings, but investing in your business can bring huge returns. Just make sure you invest the money carefully and at a variety of sources. Start with a small amount spread out, then based on the returns of each advert / campaign weigh up the most cost effective and push more heavily in that direction.
Don't forget that days of the week / year will have an enormous impact on your campaigns. People do more work on Mondays than Fridays and budgets vary throughout the year. November - March is an excellent time for business, in November businesses look to get their products ready for the new year and spend their year-ending budgets.
Early in the year businesses look to spend their taxyear-end budgets and start looking at their new taxyear expenditure.

4. Connections

Keep good contact with other businesses in similar roles to you, you never know when you might need each others services. Regular and reliable contacts will often refer business your way if they can't provide the service a client is after.
Regular / reliable contact is a sure way of gaining trust.

5. Chase

Don't sit back after you've put live your brand new and biggest ever ad campaign, chase new business.
If you and your potential customers are both posting adverts for services no ones going to get anyway, someone somewhere needs to get in contact.
Don't be afraid to hunt for those new contracts, apply to as many as you can with the basic but essential details. They won't need to spent time / money advertising for help with their website again if someone emails them after viewing the first advert.

6. Think both ways

You may be the business in this relationship, but there will always be times when you're the customer. Don't be afraid to budge on price if it's too much for the customer. They need to think you're human and understand their needs, but don't budge too much, you don't want to appear desperate or as though you always offer hugely inflated prices in the first instance.

7. Show off

If you've won awards, show them. If you've had some excellent feedback from a client, show it. Customers like to see they're not the first person visiting you for work. If they can see a string of reputable awards along with verifiable feedback they're much more likely to go ahead with you over a company they can't find anything out about.

8. News

Keep your website upto date with all the latest news. If a customer can't see anything's happened in the last year they might wonder if the company is even still going

9. Embrace new media platforms

The world is constantly changing the way it does business. Embrace social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Delicious and all the others. People need to be able to find you wherever they go and whatever they do.

10. Keep your skills upto date

It's easy when you're part of a big company, being sent on new training courses or learning from others. But starting up a business yourself can get you left behind. Make sure your products, services, skills and systems stay upto date, not just for the advice you can give to customers, but so you can keep your skills up and your products remain as new and exciting as possible. If you decide to go back to work because running your own business isn't for you you will also find you haven't been left behind on all the latest advancements.