Bumps and Potholes on the Road to Internet Riches

Own your accounts

Two kinds of accounts service internet commerce, domain registration and site hosting. Be sure that you retain ownership of both. Your investments of time and resources create intellectual property. You would not give a stranger your store keys and let them decide when you could work. Do not similarly enable someone else to deny you access to your intellectual assets and livelihood.

When resellers go bankrupt, you may not even know. Suddenly your service becomes unavailable and you can only gain access through an attorney. Worse yet, an auction may deliver the equipment servicing your account to a high bidder. Got backup?

Keep copies of source code for custom programs. If your provider insists such codes remain secret, agree not to release code to third parties except as required to conduct business. Escrow services provide security for proprietary code. Be sure to contractually establish mutual terms for release and personally pay for the escrow service.

All of the situations described have created problems for clients. A little “pre-nupt” goes a long way.

Where Your Site Should be Located

Five factors determine optimum location: cost, technology, security, convenience and traffic. You may host your site personally or contract with a hosting provider. You can own your hardware and communications equipment or lease space and rent bandwidth. A few hundred dollars (or even less) and a DSL connection maximizes convenience and allows you to chose your technology—a perfect solution for those who keep their life savings under a mattress.

Your initial needs may not serve your business as it grows. Consider future factors as well as those immediate. Also, consider the stability of your provider. Risk can be somewhat tolerated during test and development. If your operation generates substantial revenue, downtime can be costly.

Provide Unique Value

Be distinctive and show it. Give browsers (people—not programs) a reason to linger and return to your site. Make purchasing from you seem incidental to visits and as convenient as possible. Your site should reflect your individuality as well as the quality of your goods and services. 

Complexity should be transparent to users and only included to make the experience beneficial. Unless you are selling technology, focus on your core business and market using your web site as an interactive electronic brochure. “Compel customer action.”

Work from a Plan

No one builds a house without blueprints. Electricians, plumbers, framers and others who need to provide mutually compatible support work from a common plan. So should you. Unless you can personally do everything, i.e., graphics, programming, data administration, architecture, security, communications, billing, accounting, customer service, shipping, warehousing, advertising, etc. , you should have a plan that shows how the pieces work together. 

Do not plan to load hundreds of megabytes of data into a remote database on a shared host server over a 265k DSL line. Even thinking about maintaining or developing in such an environment gives (is actually a current problem) me a headache.

Hobbies are OK If You Do Not Care about Revenue

Chess, checkers, crosswords, basket weaving and technology can all provide much entertainment and consume a lot of time. Have fun if these activities meet your objectives. 

If you want to create and operate a business that generates revenue, focus on your core expertise and employ others for theirs.