Fresh Eyes

This week I had the opportunity to put together an ad for my website.  It was challenging, because I was limited on the number of characters I could use.  I had to spend some time thinking about what I most wanted potential customers to see about my business.  It was a good exercise for me.  Having to keep within limits made me decide what was the most valuable product I had for the target audience of my ad.  This will help me continue to focus on the customer, like I determined I needed to last week.

Another good lesson for me this week was getting feedback from others.  It was interesting to evaluate other’s ads and have them evaluate mine.  I got some great feedback that made me realize that the ad wasn’t being understood the way I intended it to be.  This taught me that getting feedback on these projects in the future, is necessary.  Fresh eyes on something I know so much about, can reflect the customer’s perspective better than my own.

Changing Perspective

This week was focused on marketing and drawing traffic to the website.  Every assignment required me to think from the customer’s, or potential customer’s, perspective.  This was an interesting activity for me to work through, and something that will be important to remember to do in the future.

Being able to understand and consider the customer’s perspective is very important for any successful business.  The better I can learn to think like my customer, the more able I will be to provide what they want, in a format that they want, providing the service they want, and be able to make money doing it.

The really important part of this lesson is how it relates to my relationship with other people outside of my business.  Just like being mindful of a customer’s desires, it is important to be mindful of the desires of my friends and family.  Learning this skill wont’ just help me run a successful business, but will also help me be a better wife, mother, and friend.

Getting to Work

This week was great.  I was able to take all of the research from the last few weeks and start making it happen.  There are two key takeaways for me this week.  First, preparation and research makes the work go more smoothly.  Second, seeing the work get done is very rewarding.

Working on setting up the website seemed overwhelming at first.  However, as I started actually working on it, I realized that I had already done most of the work.  Having done so much research over the last several weeks, I had already made many of the decisions necessary to create the sight.  Because of this, getting the website started was much easier than I anticipated.  I was familiar enough with each step that I worked my way through them smoothly and without much difficulty.  This was an example to me of the benefits of doing research ahead of time.  I saw the benefits of it during this week, and will remember that going forward.

Throughout this class, we have been learning about creation and how it relates to the things we are doing.  I have appreciated having this taught to me in this perspective, and it came to my mind during the assignments this week.  Creating something, although I depended a lot on the template provided by the site builder, was great.  I don’t have much opportunity to create things anymore, and I loved being able to do this.  Being a creator, following after our Creator, is a rewarding activity that I won’t take for granted in the future.

Looking Around and Taking Note

This week we studied site designs and PayPal payments.  The key insights I gained from these things were different, but both related to considering other groups of people.  First, during site design, we looked at other websites using the same business model we plan to, and looked for commonalities and what we liked about them.  Second, we worked through creating a button for PayPal, after reading about the service, and had the opportunity to consider what questions we would need to ask during the process.

While looking at other websites that sell merchandise, I had to put myself in the mindset of a customer and website user, which was easy because that’s the role that I was taking.  Looking for commonalities between the different websites helped me look at the details of how the site was designed, rather than just the functionality of it.  This put into perspective the amount of details and decisions that I will have to make when designing my own website.  It could easily become overwhelming, but being able to evaluate what I liked in other websites should make it more manageable.  The key insight I gained from this exercise is that I can evaluate other businesses when considering decisions I’m making for my own.  There are many successful merchant websites that are available for me to look at.  I can benefit from their experience rather than having to figure it all out on my own.  This will help me better use my resources in the future, and will hopefully help me avoid making decisions that cause me hardships.

It was interesting to learn more about PayPal, because I have used it very seldom, and not for many years.  I wouldn’t have considered using it for my website, but after this assignment, I may reconsider.  However, the key insight I gained from this part of the lesson wasn’t about PayPal specifically.  It was about putting myself in the place of my customers, and getting input from other people.  We had to ask a few questions in this assignment, and I was quite surprised at the questions I saw from other students in the class.  My questions were not comprehensive enough, and reading through the questions others were asking made me realize that I needed to understand the topic better than I had on my own.  I realized that I wanted to have the answers to their questions, because I would be much better prepared to make decisions for my business.  I need to get input from others during this process, because I won’t be able to do as well on my own.  Putting myself in the mindset of my customers, and getting input and feedback from others, will help me create a much more successful website than if I did it all by myself.

More Decision Making

This week I had to evaluate and choose a site builder and host for my website.  There are so many options for each of these, so being able to compare and contrast the options was very important.  To narrow down which options to evaluate, I had to consider what I wanted my business to be, what services I expect from a host and site builder, and what effort am I willing to put into the development of the site itself. 

Based on my lack of coding skills, I knew that I needed to evaluate site builders that were designed for ease of use.  I also had to remember that my intention is to run an online store, which meant that I needed certain functionality to be available on my site.  This ruled out the free website builder options.  Therefore, I evaluated a few of the subscription services with drag-and-drop site builder programs.

Choosing a host became very easy, although I still compared a few to be sure that I made a good choice.  Because I had chosen a site builder that offers free hosting, I am confident that I will do both services through the same company.

Overall, the main things that were important for me to consider at this stage were the skills and knowledge I have, along with the goals of the business.  Only by keeping these things in focus, as I learned last week, was I able to compare options that will work for me.  When making decisions that seem overwhelming because of so many options being available, this is what will allow me to keep on track and eliminate options that won’t work in the long run.  This reinforced the lesson I’ve learned about keeping a long-term perspective and remembering the goals I have set for myself.

Focus on Goals

This week focused on more decisions that need to be made when starting an online business.  First, where to obtain merchandise to sell, and second, what involvement to take in the merchant process.  To help make these decisions, we learned how to use different criteria to rate our options, and how to use those ratings to determine the best decision for our business.

The most important lesson I learned this week was the need to focus on long-term goals.  While choosing criteria and assigning ratings to them, it is easy to lose track of what the ratings should be based on.  More than once, I had to go back and change my assessments once I remembered to take into consideration the goals of the people who are starting this business.  Without focusing on this, decisions will be made that will not be the correct ones to achieve what I want to achieve.

For instance, during the study of affiliate marketing and drop shipping methods of business, it would have been easy to choose affiliate marketing as the correct option.  However, it was stated that the goals of the group starting the business was to gain experience about running a business.  The affiliate marketing could be seen as more manageable, because there is no customer service to handle.  It would be easy to have chosen this as the correct direction to go.  When considering the goals of the group, however, it is clearly not going to get them the experience they are looking for.  Drop shipping is the correct choice for this group, because it will better accomplish their long-term goals as a business.

This will be an important lesson for me in the future.  As I make decisions about my own business, or other aspects of my life, I need to remember to take a step back and look at my goals with a larger perspective.  That way, I won’t make the mistake of choosing something that will send me in the wrong direction.

Where do I start?

This week was focused on what decisions need to be made about starting a new online business.  The biggest decisions are deciding which business model to follow, and what product or service to provide.  Working through a case study helped me to gain some insight about the challenges and strategies that can be used to make these decisions.  Communicating with the other students in the class showed me how personal beliefs and opinions can bring people to different conclusions on these decisions, even while working with the same information.

The case study made me consider the opinions and experience of a group, rather than just myself.  I was able to take in the opinions shared and add my opinion to theirs while recommending a decision.  This made me realize that the people I choose to work with will have a great deal of influence over my business and how it is setup and what it will accomplish.  The decision of who to go into business with should be made carefully.

It was very interesting to see the difference in recommendations from other students.  There were varying opinions on what should be done first, and everyone had good reasons for making the recommendation they had.  It showed that the same information was valued differently by each student, which affected the recommendation they decided to make.  There wasn’t necessarily a right and wrong answer, just which way each of us would act based on what we thought was more important. 

Overall, the lesson material this week has taught me that creating an online business is not a straight-forward process.  It is a series of decisions that are very personal to the individuals who are starting the business, and those decisions should be made based on the experience, knowledge, and goals of those individuals.  I need to be mindful of the people I choose to work with.  They should add to my experience, which gives greater opportunities to work with, and agree with me on the goals we have for the business.  However, they shouldn’t be a push-over and agree with me on everything.  I want to work with people who will voice their opinions, especially when they are different from my own.  This way, I will know that the final decision will be the best decision possible to make our business successful.