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Mexicans with Internet access are growing rapidly, according to the Mexican Internet Association, from 2016 to 2017 the country grew by 12%, reaching 79.1 million users.
On average we spend eight hours connected from different devicesthis combination of factors makes starting an online business a great idea.
A very common mistake is to start working without a business plan, this is the main reason for the failure of an online business.
Many pages are created only with the passion of an entrepreneur, using their savings to develop it, put it online and create the content believing that later they will find a way to have income.
In my opinion, a change of perspective is necessary to see things with the mentality of an entrepreneur whose objective is to generate profits, creating from the beginning a business plan with well-defined strategies.
In this article we will review the five aspects that I consider most relevant at the time of develop a website in Mexico.
1. Business plan
Developing a plan before starting will allow you to define strategies for each stage of your site, you will also be able to analyze if your project will be profitable and if you have the budget for development and operation while you reach your breakeven point.
1.1 Determine the type of website
There are many options to present the content of your site, it is very important that you first define its format, will it be a blog? A news site? A community on a specific topic? An online store? Or an informative page about your company?
These are just some examples, clearly defining how you will present the information will allow you to quote the design and programming to the number of people you need for your content creation team.
You can see here if you want to get an idea of where to focus your website.
1.2 Analysis of the competition
When the competitors were mostly other local companies, it was important to review the strategies of your competition in order to offer competitive products to the market.
Imagine now that the competition is worldwide, so you need to pay attention to analyzing other sites that offer products or services similar to yours.
Take into account that even if you find them in the search engine results, it does not mean that they are your direct competitors, some barriers to entry to your market such as language, payment methods or tariff restrictions can limit a company’s access to your market.
If this is the case, doing a review of your offer can help you implement other ideas to your products to improve your value proposition.
1.3 Work team
Every day the tools to create a website are cheaper and easier to use. This allows more people to have access to entrepreneurship online as freelancers.
However, the time will soon come when you will need help to create more content, to answer the questions of your customers on social networks, to maintain inventory, etc.
Although at the beginning you are responsible for the entire operation, create an organization chart with key positions and a specific hiring plan to be clear at which key moments in the growth of your company you should hire staff to help you.
Take into account that even experts who work with your company have a team behind them that helps them in the key aspects of their business.
Start by hiring independent professionals by the hour or specific project, then you can hire part-time staff until your income allows you to create a full-time team focused on the growth of your company.
1.4 Sources of income
As I mentioned in the article, there are many options to earn income online.
The most common are selling advertising space on your blog, affiliate marketing, company-sponsored posts, or direct sales of products or services.
Defining which will be the main one for your site will allow you to establish clear strategies to monetize your business, it is possible and even advisable to have several sources of income; however, focusing on the one that generates the highest return on investment will ensure that you have the income to continue operating in the short term.
1.5 Financial projections
Once you have determined your sources of income, initial investment and operating costs, it is time to define possible scenarios that your business will face.
The ideal is to create three projections: one with a favorable scenario, one conservative and one negative.
If your plan is to dedicate yourself completely to your project, I recommend that you first have saved to cover at least one year of your operation, including your personal expenses, so you will have enough time to learn about the cycles of the industry and the details of your new business.
2. Create a web page
2.1 Domain and hosting
Probably the most important aspect for branding your digital business is .
Try to match exactly the name of your company and whenever possible choose .com, although in recent years other endings such as .net or .org have become popular, we are used to trying .com first when we write a domain in the browser.
As a second option, you can choose a domain with a country ending such as .mx or .com.mx, although these endings are recognized by Mexican Internet users, it could limit your future plans to expand sales to other countries. In you can for your website without any difficulty and with a wide variety of extensions.
In the technical aspect, you should pay close attention to the hosting of the site, since it is the space where the files of your website will be stored.
If you have doubts about what a hosting is and how to choose the best in Mexico, I recommend you read my article: , where I explain in detail all the aspects that you should take into account.
2.2 Content Manager
Regardless of the type of site you decide to build, you must have it updated all the time, for that you will need a content manager.
Basically it is a system that works behind your website and allows you, as its name implies, to manage all the information published on your site.
With a username and password for each member of your work team, you can keep the content up to date and divide the tasks by area.
There are two types of content managers, custom made and open source.
The first ones are created by a web design company to serve their clients, the advantage is that they are tailored to your needs, if your site needs very specific functions, this is probably the only way to obtain them.
The downside is that you will be dependent on the development company for future updates to the management system.
On the other hand, there are many open source options available, the most popular being WordPress and Joomla.
Being used by many sites there is a lot of documentation on the internet to configure them, with a little dedication and time you can even develop your own site following a tutorial; If your needs are standard, such as a blog or even an online store, this is a good low-cost implementation option.
2.3 Site design
It must reflect the identity of your brand, a very common mistake that we entrepreneurs make is to believe that we are designers and armed with powerpoint we get down to the task of “designing” our logo.
There are many reasons not to do this, the main one being perceived brand equity. Do you remember a time when you came to buy a product and when they told you the price it seemed cheap? This happened because of this concept that is directly related to our willingness to buy.
The relationship works in the following way, the greater the perception of value, the more money we are willing to pay, if you take into account that the design of your brand and the user experience play a fundamental role when your potential client determines the value of your product, then having a site that looks like two pesos will make your sales proportional.
3. Operation of your site
3.1 Content Marketing
It consists of offering relevant information to your consumers at different stages of their purchase decision process.
It is a long-term strategy since most of the time it is focused on brand positioning, that is, that potential customers know you, trust you and later buy from you.
Much of the companies today are based in one way or another on creating content using social networks to distribute it and drive traffic to the website.
3.2 Content
You will need to create quality content for your target audience, content marketing strategies pose two challenges, the first is to create content that attracts the attention of a certain audience so that they pay attention, interact and take action.
The second challenge is the saturation to which we are subject (), thanks to the fact that now practically all of us have the ability to create content in a simple way with our cell phones and applications, it is becoming more and more complex for companies to stand out only with the quality of their content. .
There are many options available for creating content, from doing it yourself by writing articles for your blog and designing social media posts with apps like Canva, hiring a freelancer to help you, collaborating with other professionals in your industry, and even inviting people in your audience to contribute content.
3.3 Technical support
This is one of the aspects that we often forget to take into account when we start online.
If you have contracted the development of your site with a web design company, carefully review the support policies they offer as well as the hours of operation.
If you have planned an advertising campaign that has the potential to attract a lot of visits to your site, notify the support department so that they can monitor these spikes and allocate the necessary resources to your server.
If you developed the site with a your best friend will be the support department of your hosting provider, so I recommend hiring one with excellent customer service.
4. Promote your content
4.1 SEO
Millions of internet searches are carried out every day, which in turn generate traffic to sites with quality information.
For this reason, one of your priorities is to ensure that each publication is optimized so that search engines can add it to their database and be one of the first results in their list of results.
A site with a…
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