Selling Your Online Business

There could any number of different reasons that you’ve decided to exit your online business, or shut down your website.

Before taking your site down altogether, explore the options available to you with knowledgeable web professionals. Together, you might be able to determine how you can improve your website to attract the traffic or sales you had planned to achieve.

Selling Your Online Business

If you have explored all your options and still would like to exit your online business, then your current domain name and portions of your online business could be valuable to others.

For this reason, you may consider selling your online business, or the domain name by itself. You can advertise your online business for sale on any number of online marketplaces.

Be prepared to provide the following:

• Past performance, such as number of visits, page views, bounce rate, and other website metrics. Web analytics tools such as Google Analytics can easily generate this kind of information.
• Business costs
• Professional financial statements showing a minimum of 2-3 years of business history (if you are operating an ecommerce site)
• Growth potential

It also helps to inform your potential buyers about the reasons you're selling your online business. If you’re honest, you will have a better chance of establishing their trust and making the sale.

Selling your online business may involve non-compete agreements, due diligence disclosures, and multiple contracts. A successful sale could have tax implications as well. Consult a lawyer and an accountant for guidance.

Online Marketplaces

These online marketplaces specialize in selling websites and ecommerce sites. Please know that website brokers typically charge commissions for sales.  

Website RFP

3. Email Your Website RFP

Email your website RFP to the entire list of potential web designers you have shortlisted. Here is an easy way to do so:

1. Compose a new email address it to yourself.
2. Add all your potential web designers to the BCC field of your e-mail
3. Create a clear subject line, such as "XYZ Business is looking to have a website created (RFP attached)"
4. Write a brief introductory sentence describing your business and yourself
5. Attach your website RFP to the e-mail, send and then wait for feedback

4. Review, Negotiate and Get Comfy.

Next you'll be reviewing the feedback from you website RFP. There will likely be a mix of good, not-so-good and standout replies. If possible, call and make a one-on-one appointment with the candidates that stood out. Meeting the potential web designer is very important, especially since you will want to feel comfortable working together. Consider the following points when meeting a web designer:

• There is no need to pay for an initial meet and greet
• If you do not already have a domain name or web hosting, let the designer know you will still need to do so. It is ideal to have both registered in your business name
• Ask for references to websites that the designer created with similar requirements to your own needs
• It is okay to ask for a list of past clients to contact. If you do contact a reference, the only question that really matters is whether the client would work with the designer again. The only answer that matters is "Yes."
• It is not common that a quality web designer will develop a website mock-up for you as a free pitch to get the contract. This approach will often scare away quality talent
• A quality web designer will listen to your plan, assess your needs, and provide constructive feedback regarding any areas of your website plan that may need improvement

5. Get Everything in Writing

After picking a web designer, commit everything about the project to writing, including:
- Having everything in writing provides both parties with a clear blueprint of what is expected.
- Following this process will help to make the process of finding a web designer an easier task. The time spent planning your website needs will make for an organized, well-communicated working relationship between yourself and the designer you choose to create your website.

• Financial terms and payment schedules
• Any legal requirements that need signing off
• Itemized list of what and when deliverables will be provided to you by the web designer
• Itemized list of what and when deliverables will be provided by you to the web designer
• A project timeline outlining key milestone and final release dates

The average

This post was originally created for the now discontinued ebusiness blog (ebizblog.ca) on July 7th, 2008.

The average small business does not know how to find a web designer or web developer. However, with some initial planning and careful preparation, you will be able to find a web development professional to meet your business needs.

1. Evaluate the Needs of Your Online Business Presence

Setting clear, concise goals will help you understand what your business wants to achieve from the website. Create a "Request for Proposal," or RFP, to write these goals down and determine which website features are essential and which ones would be nice additions. A website RFP is also useful when you are recruiting and communicating with web development professionals. Download the following document to help you develop your proposal: Create an RFP for Your Website.

2. Narrow Down a Group of Web Designers/Web Developers

After creating your website RFP, you will need to shortlist a group of web development professionals. Below is a list of websites that will help you assemble your potential shortlist:

• guru.com
• elance.com
• craigslist.com

Additionally, a Google search for "Vancouver freelance web design" or "Vancouver web designers" will give you many different local web designers to consider. When looking at the portfolios of potential web designers, think about the following questions:

• Do I like the look and feel of their previous work?
• Do they have quality references?
• Have they created websites similar to what I need for my website?
• Do they have all the technical skills required to complete the job? It's important that whoever you choose to work with thoroughly understands the technical requirements necessary for your website.

Your online presence

Your online presence can be critical to the success of your business. Here are some tips to make sure your site is seen:

Get your site listed in the DMOZ directory.

This is a huge boost as it's said that Google's directory comes straight from the DMOZ directory. The DMOZ is commonly known as the Open Directory Project and it has strict guidelines on who is listed. Go to the DMOZ website for submission information.

Pay a bit—use Yahoo Directory Submit.

Yahoo! Directory Submit provides expedited review of websites that are included in the Yahoo! Directory. Furthermore, for each listing accepted into the directory, there is a recurring annual fee to maintain the listing.

Stay up to date—use Google Sitemaps.

Google Sitemaps is an easy way for you to submit all your URLs to the Google indexand get detailed reports about the visibility of your pages on Google. With Google Sitemaps, you can automatically keep Google informed of all your web page additions and changes, helping improve your coverage in the Google crawl.

Submit and re-submit your site.

You should submit your site to Google, Yahoo, and MSN at least once, and no more than once, every 30 days. Although Google says that manually submitting your pages to their index is unnecessary, they have an interface for you to do so. MSN will seldom visit a website unless invited by submission. Yahoo will dramatically increase visits after submission.

Aim for real content, more page quantity and frequent changes.

The bottom line for getting good search engine results is to have lots of keyword rich content on lots of pages. Google likes big sites. The larger sites are presumed to be better funded, better organized, better constructed, and therefore better sites. Content must be updated often; this is a Google patent and concerns the changes to page content over time. Google sees newer content as better content especially if the site ‘theme’ is news, retail or auction.

.CA is of course

There are currently over 250 ccTLDS (country code top-level domains):

 

.CA is of course the most important ccTLD for Canadian small business. An individual or business must meet Canadian Presence Requirementsin order to register a .CA.
 

Aside from .CA, however, there are 252 ccTLDs in the world. I won’t review them here but have included a link to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority ccTLD database which maintains a comprehensive list.
 

Many of the ccTLDs are unrestricted and don’t have presence requirements in order to register them. Many are also used for “vanity” purposes and marketed as something other than for their own country. Some examples include:

• .CO (actually Columbia but associated globally with the words "company," "corporation" and "commerce")
• .TV (actually Tuvalu but marketed as “television”)
• .FM (actually Federated States of Micronesia but marketed as “radio”)
• .LY (actually Libya but used for popular URL shorteners like bit.ly or ow.ly)
• .WS (actually Western Samoa but marketed as “.website”)
• .ME (actually Montenegro but marketed for individuals)
• .CC (actually Cocos Islands but used for “commercial companies”  “community colleges” "creative commons” and more)

Now that you have a background of what domain name options are available, stay tuned for future blog posts which will help you choose the appropriate domains for your business. You can find additional information on domain names, register a new domain or consolidate a domain portfolio online.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cybele Negris

Cybele Negris is Co-founder & President of Webnames.ca, a multi-million dollar internet solutions company. She serves on the boards of Small Business BC, Forum for Women Entrepreneurs, Small Business Roundtable of BC, Vancouver Economic Development Comm.