Getting your Business Plan for 2020!
Are you getting ready to take your online business to the next level and watch some massive growth unfold over the coming months? That is Great.
Before you start to develop and plan what you want to do to make that happen, it’s important to stop and figure out where you’re at right now.
Developing a Business plan for future success is all about data.
You can function most successfully and spend your time and money most effectively if you know exactly where you are starting from. By recording information, you can start to see what’s working, what isn’t, and what trends are starting to play out. And it all starts with knowing where you’re at right now.
So let’s take a look at some of the information you want to record.
First, decide how you want to record this information. There are several ways to record including handwriting this information in a notebook, using a word document to do it digitally or use a spreadsheet.
I prefer a spreadsheet because I have the option to have multiple columns for additional information like weekly and monthly averages and even map it all out in dates to help me get a clearer picture.
Some key information needed to go forward with a successful business plan is the following.
Trafic is needed to grow your reach and build your community.
That means getting more traffic but also involving the people that come to your site by encouraging them to click around and get more. information.
Important things to keep track of: Total overall visitors, unique visitors, bounce rate, and of course it is important to know where the traffic is coming from.
Once you get traffic to site your next goal is always to get these visitors on your list.
Here you want to track total number of subscribers, conversion rates for each of your opt-in forms and pages, open rates for your emails, and also unsubscribes. As you begin to gather and review this information regularly, you’ll get a much better picture of your subscribers.
Subscribers are great, but customers are better.
Start by monitoring how many total clients you have and how many purchases daily, weekly, and monthly.
Some other important numbers to look at are the total lifetime value of your average customer, repeat purchases, and refund rates.
Finally, let’s take a look at your profits. This is your typical accounting data. You want to keep track of your expenses as well as your income.
With those two sets of numbers, you can easily calculate your overall profit. I find it helpful to look at income for the month, but track profits on a daily basis.
Yes, you can take a look at most of this data in various different places like your shopping cart, google analytics and your autoresponder service for example, but it’s important to have it all this data in one place. This makes it a lot easier to connect the dots and see the relationships between the various sets of numbers.
Once you have your initial information collection set up, make it a new routine to update the numbers regularly so you can see what’s working, what isn’t, and just how much you’re growing as you move through the next, weeks, months and years.