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FREE Business Plan Template

Creating a Business Plan

Facts About an Online
     Business

Registering A Business

email addresses and
     Domain Names

Merchant Accounts

Five Steps to making
     money Online

Advertising on the Internet

Sample Documents

Business Plan guide and
     Template

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Creating the Business Plan.

Creating your business plan is one of those tasks which seems like a chore, but is important to the successful development of your business. As the process is worked through, questions will be asked which might not have been thought of, or issues raised, which if not considered could cause real problems in the future. Being able to talk about ideas is one thing, writing them down in logical order is often hard, but which organising your thoughts something might be missed which could be the difference between the business being successful, or failing.
When the plan is developed you will understand more of the opportunities and potential “pot holes” for the business. The following plan is not a fail-safe method for success, if it was we would be out playing golf or something - not sitting at a computer, however, it is hoped that by going through these steps your business will have a better chance of success.
Assumptions:
Assumptions are that you:
• have access to Part One: the resource kit, which will help answer questions which arise, and
• are funding the business yourself and every dollar counts.
Method:
The approach starts by outlining the Major Topics; then adding the finer points for each of the Major Topics. It’s important that the topics are treated as well defined “categories” into which specific information or thoughts are placed so that they can be found again and included in the plan for the business.
 

Major Topics

Writing the Internet Business Plan
The following document is both a guide and a template. If you are reading the pdf version of this, a word document is available at……………….After filling in the form, simply delete the descriptions and suggestions we have added to create your own internet business plan.

Executive Summary
The Executive Summary is always written last, should be a page, or two at most, which pulls together the essence of your business, why it will succeed and where it will be in three years time. Having read this Summary anyone should have a picture in their mind about the business.

Table of Contents
A Table of Contents is essential for you and others to easily refer to sections of interest within the document. Creating a document with a Table of Contents is straightforward. Infomedia will provide a sample document of this business plan outline as a Microsoft Word document.

Section 1 Company Description

Company Description
The first part of the Guide describes the various types of business registration. Is your business name registered? Have you registered the domain name? After being satisfied you have completed all the necessary actions.
 

Company Description: Name: Address: Registered Name: ABN: Phone number: Domain name: ISP: Bank: Credit Card Facility: Description of business

Which activities do you have others, outside the business, do for you? If others deliver or manufacture products for you, do you have written agreements with them? Do your agreements cover you in case sales increase significantly; are you locked into period payments irrespective of sales or use?
 

Major Customers
Who are your major customers within the target market, are they reliable as customers?
 

Future Business Profile
What do you expect the profile of the business to be in 1, 2 and 3 years?

Section 2. Products
Range of Products and/or services
Which ranges of products and/or services does, or will, the Business provide?
 

Range of Products and/or services:

Forms of payment
What forms of payment are you going to accept fro the products and/or services?
 

Forms of payment: Cash Cheque Credit Cards (which one, or many) COD

Cataloguing of Products
Briefly describe the system for cataloguing products with unique product numbers and consistent descriptions.
 

 

Product Coding System:

Services, Quotations and Payment
If your business provides services, describe:

• the way in which the services are defined and booked,

• how quotations are prepared, terms described in a contract or letter of engagement and

• schedule for payment(s).
   

Guarantees and Warranties
Describe in principle the guarantees, warranties, returns, re-supply (replacements) and other Customer support services which the business will provide.

 

Guarantees and Warranties: Returns Policy: Replacement: Types of Customer Support:

Premises
Briefly describe the premises for the business, will it be run from home, an office.

 

Requirements for premises:

Section 3. The Market
Defining the target market for the business

The business must be focused. An analysis of the market is necessary to understanding that there is the opportunity for the business to succeed.
Define the market that the business is involved with now, or in the future; how the market is segmented into different major activities or services and which of these are the target for the current or planned business.

 

Briefly describe the market in terms of its size (local, national, international)
What are your keywords and terms?
How many times are your key words/products searched for?
Using your keywords who are your competitors?
How well are your competitors optimised?
What would be an average value for orders placed in this market?
Is the area of interest growing quickly or is ti to a community of interest which is quite constant?
Estimate the current level of uptake of the internet in the sector?
Is the internet in common use in the sector?
Are there established major businesses which you would target?
An indication of the number of new businesses opening up in the sector

Define the target market for business and any special characteristics.
 

Number of Potential Customers
What makes your understanding and offerings new or different

Will the business use a model which has worked well elsewhere (external model)
 Compare the market focus of the external model to that for the business
 Compare market size
 Compare market value
 Market readiness for acceptance
 

Characteristics of the target market
Price Sensitivity
The costs of the goods and/or services the business delivers will affect the market segment and the target customers within that segment. For example, if the market segment is highly price competitive then the business must operate within that constraint.

 

How price sensitive are the intended products and/or services?:

How are your Products Normally found
Describe how the market sector of interest finds out about new products and services in your service area, is it through local newspapers, mail drops, trade magazines, journals, radio or TV advertisements, through a web site most people look at, e-mail notifications, trade shows, club meets, word of mouth, internet search engine(s).
 

How do your prospective customers usually find out about new products or services?

How do your prospective customers currently use the internet?
How does the sector use the internet, for example, for information, products, pricing, subscriptions, service level agreements, confirming the credibility of the company, part of background check on potential buyers or suppliers.
 

How do your prospective customers currently use the internet?:

What are the usual payment methods?
Which forms of financial settlement does the market use, for example, account charging, credit cards, COD, cash? Describe how the accepted forms of “doing business” will fit with the availability of e-commerce on-line options.
 

What are the usual payment methods?

Where are the Major Costs and Savings
Where are the major costs in the sector? Are the costs of sale high relative to the value of the products and/or services? Will a web presence enable reduction of costs in the market sector? Are other businesses using such an on-line approach. How accepting is the sector of the internet and in relation to which business activities?
 

What are the major costs in the supply of the products or services? Where are savings to be made? What are companies like yours doing on the Internet?

Are You a Market Leader or Follower
Market leading issues are to be discussed as to whether the business will be pioneering a new approach, improving an accepted approach or leveraging off known “success” stories in the sector but which might not be available in your service area or customer base?
 

If you are providing something new to the market – what is it?

Product Delivery
Inventory management affects the market’s expectations for delivery times. If the target market for the business expects same day delivery then the business must be able to deliver on that basis. Delivery would be either from its own stock or by having the goods delivered from a supplier’s warehouse in the accepted time frame. If the market sector for the business is in the sandwich or fast food sector then delivery might be more in terms of 30 minutes. Other sectors such as retail goods, delivery within a week might be the accepted standard; for holiday bookings the time frame could be months.
 

How quickly do customers expect to receive the products or services?

Fulfilment
Fulfilment (handling, shipping and insurance) is the term used for how the goods are to be delivered to the customer. These activities can be a major cost in relation to the value of the product. Describe briefly which mechanisms the business will use for fulfilment (more detail will be added in Section 7 on the operations plan of the business)
 

How are you going to meet the delivery expectations of your customers?

Section 4 Competitors

When thinking about competitors it is useful to think about a situation where if you were to set up a company to compete with the business, how would you do it? If the business is to be a new enterprise, when the plan is finished, leave it for a few days and then re-read the plan, or get someone else to read it, and consider how a competitor might view the business.

Characteristics of your competitors?
What are the characteristics of your current competitors and/or the characteristics of the companies against which the business will compete?
 

Characteristics of your competitors?

Future Competitors
Are there other organisations which are positioned to move into your market sector or mount an aggressive campaign to your customers or prospects? These companies should be checked out to discover their time frames and what their approaches might be.
 

Who might be your future competitors?

Categorise your Competitors
Categorise your competitors into those which might be aggressive, those which are looking to maintain the status quo, and those which might be weak and open to a challenge from the business.
 

Aggressive competitors: Weak competitors, open to a challenge

Section 5 Marketing and Sales Plan

The business is being created to respond to a problem, create an efficiency, or provide an opportunity and of course make you money. It is necessary to define how you are going to market and sell the benefits of the new business.
Marketing and selling the new business is outlined in this section of the plan.

Search Engines
For an on-line business the “Market” is actually the Search Engines, first and foremost.
If the internet is to be your sole marketing and sales environment detail how the business will help prospects to find the site. If your target market is internet literate Search Engines will be used to trawl the internet, therefore, the business web site has be designed to be highly visible to the search engines.

Search Engine Strategies
Using the Search Engine optimisation notes in this document, provide a list of the search engines that are to be targeted and the keywords and tags that will be used throughout your site to maximise chances of being discovered.
 

Search Engine Strategies: Which Search Engine(s): Key words: Meta Tags:

Site Optimisation
Describe how the business will test the design for the web site to insure visibility to the search engines.
 

Characteristics of the web site to optimise for discovery by Search Engines:

Branding and First Impressions
Describe the way in which the business will be branded, the image it will create and the manner in which it will be presented. Internet businesses need to be aware of the internet services available to the customers and prospects. For example, if the business is targeting rural customers with low speed dial up lines, the web pages will need to display quickly. Designs need to contain concise content, limited resolution images and no graphics, downloads or animations which require high bandwidth.

Web Savvy Customers?

Describe the “first impression” that you want a person to get when the site is displayed on the screen:

Describe how the marketing aims will be aligned with the presentation. The marketing and presentation need to match not only the target market, communications infrastructure in the service area, but also the skill levels of the target audience. If the audience is not used to the internet, browsing web pages and conducting e-commerce, then the presentation style and site navigation will be very straightforward and intuitive. Remember that your audience will be impatient, and work under the assumption that the customers or prospects will be “working out” how to use the site on their own. The business might get a call for support, but that would only occur when the customer or prospect is already “confused” and probably exasperated by the experience so far.

 

What are your assumptions about the skill levels of the targeted customers? What factors are to be taken in account when the web site is designed?

Initial Prospect List
Define a sequence of priorities for contacts and promotions. Be sure to target the most likely to appreciate the offerings of the business first. Early adopters provide valuable feedback, examples or anecdotes and references and most importantly, cash flow.
 

Which group of prospects will be the first “target” for your business?

Marketing Channels
Describe which channels the business will use to get its message to customers and prospects, whether there are priorities and how the effectiveness of the approaches will be measured and evaluated.
 

How will the business “announce” its presence on the internet? How will the effectiveness of an announcement be measured? e.g. site meters

Section 6 Risks

Risks include:
Exposure:
• No-one finds your site
Interaction with site:
• Site is not always on-line
• When they do find it they do not “stay” and look around
• When they do look around they do not purchase
• Site is “stale” and does not encourage return visits

Doing business with you:
• The business is unresponsive to questions or orders
• Products are not updated and kept current
• Prices and shipping costs are not kept up to date
• Slow shipping (especially if time critical like for Christmas)
• Customers are not kept informed as to the “status” of the order
• Returns and warranties are not handled effectively
Privacy and Security:
• Payments cannot be abused
• Customer information cannot be abused
 

Briefly describe which risks are most applicable to your business?

Risk Mitigation
Risks, once recognised, can be lessened by:
a) recognising the risks and
b) planning what to do if they arise
 

How are you going to reduce the risks that are most likely to apply to the business?

Section 7 Operational Plan

Start within your limits!
After set-up how are you going to run the business. Rather than writing too much the idea here is to enter the names of the people with specific responsibilities, including those of people or companies outside the business, as a check that the major essentials are covered.
 

Order Management and fulfilment:

• Who is going to answer inquiries received from, or about, the site?

• Define the processes which will be used to manage an order. It is assumed that the software you use for the site will provide designated people with notification that an order has been placed on the site.

• Who will receive e-mail notifications of orders and/or check the site and with what frequency?

• When an order is received who is responsible for making sure that the products are available and ready for shipping?

• If a product is not available, or there are not enough to meet the requirements of the order, who is going to contact the purchaser, let them know and adjust the credit card payments.

• Are you going to manage “backorders” and if so how?

• What are your processes going to be for returned items?

• What are the processes for honouring warranties?
   

Dishonesty:

• What are the processes for managing Repudiation?

• What are your processes for managing people using stolen credit cards?

Web site maintenance:

• Who is going to maintain the web site?

• What is your strategy for adding products?

• What is your strategy for “promotions” (sales, discounts), how long will they run for?

• Who can change products, prices and/or shipping (freight costs) on the web site?

Customer Management
Apart from looking after customers when inquiries are received, or orders placed, it is essential that customers references are maintained and used to continue to promote the site and your products and/or services. There are just two major questions here, namely:
Who will be responsible for maintaining your customer lists?
If you are going to build lists of prospects who is going to be responsible and how are you going to manage customer contacts in light of the Privacy Laws?


 

	one off costs	monthly costs	annual costs	transaction costs
Set up Costs
Registering Business  Name (e.g. in NSW)	120.00
Setting up Pty Company  (optional)	800.00
Domain Name Registration (.au)			120.00
Domain Name Registration (.com)			40.00
ISP Services
Dial-up		19.95	239.40
Broadband (Cable or ADSL)		89.95	1079.40
Hosting fee (usually incl. in ISP costs)
e-mail accounts (usually incl. in ISP costs)
Web site and e-Commerce  Software	450.00
Secure Server for order and settlement management		23.95	287.40
Merchant Account (manual credit card)		50.00	600.00	0.40
Merchant Account on-line settlement		30.00	360.00	0.02