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Starting a business? Here are 14 important startup tips that will help you make your startup a success.
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What do you need to do to start a business? There are dozens of websites including ours that have checklists that remind you of the many tasks you should perform when starting a business. Although such checklists are very useful because they help you remember important startup steps, they are just To Do lists. They tell you what to do, but don't provide any tips about what makes a business successful.

Unfortunately, you don't succeed in business just by completing a list of tasks. Nor will your business be a success just because you think it's a good idea.

What will make or break your business? What determines if it will be a success?

Here are 14 tips for starting a business and making it succeed.

1. Know yourself, your true motivational level, the amount of money you can risk, and what you're willing to do to be successful.
Sure, we all want to make millions of dollars. But what are you willing to give up to reach that goal? How many hours a week will you work on an ongoing basis? How far out of your comfort zone are you willing to stretch? How far will your family stretch with you? To be successful, keep your business plans in line with your personal and family goals and resources.

2. Choose the right business for you.
The old formula – find a need and fill it – still works. It will always work. The key to success is finding needs that you can fill, that you want to fill, and that will produce enough income to build a profitable business.

3. Be sure there really is a market for what you want to sell.
One of the biggest mistakes startups make is to assume a lot of people will want to buy a particular product or service, because the business owner likes the ideas or knows one or two people who want the product or service. To minimize your risk for loss, never assume there is a market. Research the idea. Talk to real potential prospects (who aren't family and friends) to find out if what you want to sell is something they'd be interested in buying, and if so, what they'd pay for the product or service.


4. Plan to succeed.
If you're not seeking investors or putting a huge sum of money into your business, you may not need an elaborate business plan, but you still do need a plan - one that specifies your goal – your destination – and then lays out at least a skeletal roadmap for how you'll get to where you want to go. The plan will change as you progress and learn more about your customers and competition, but it will still help you stay focused and headed in the right directions. Use our business planning worksheet to help develop that basic plan.


5. Don't procrastinate.
I've heard some people advise would-be business owners to not move ahead with their business until they have investigated every last detail of the business they want to start, and are absolutely sure it's all going to work and be profitable. The problem with that approach is that it leads to procrastination. No one ever really has all the pieces in place – even after they've started their business. Yes, you need to research the market, have a rudimentary plan in place and do things like get a tax id if needed, register with local officials, if required, etc. But if you try to make everything perfect before you launch, you may never get around to starting the business at all.

6. Start on a small scale before going all out.
Some people believe that entrepreneurs are risk-takers. But for the most part, successful entrepreneurs don't like walking blindfolded on a limb. Instead, they take controlled risks. They test an idea on a small scale, then build on what works well, tweak what shows promise and discard the disasters.


7. Don't fixate on mistakes or get demoralized by them.
The difference between successful people and everyone else is that the successful people learn from their mistakes and move on. They don't dwell on failure, blame the economy, curse their bad luck, or blame other people for their fate. If the path to their goal is blocked, they look for an alternate path, or sometimes choose a different, more attainable goal.

8. Learn from others.
Find mentors, join groups with like-minded people, learn everything you can about your industry and what it takes to get from where you are to where you want to be. Attend industry conferences. Take training courses when they are available. Buy courses offered by experts. You'll save a tremendous amount of trial and error by learning from people who have been there before.


9. Think of what you do AS a business.
Keep track of income and expenses, keep business money separate from personal funds, find out what regulations your business needs to abide by.


10. Understand the difference between working for yourself and building an ongoing business.
If you want to build a business, you need to develop systems and methods that allow you to hire other people to DO the work of the business while you plan it. You limit the potential for growth if you don't bring in other people to work for you.


11. Get to know investors.
If the business you are starting will need investors to grow, do what you can to find out what investors are looking for and where to find those who might invest in your kind of business. Local angel and venture capital groups are a good place to start – attend meetings they hold or meetings that investors are speaking at.


12. Put yourself out there.
Ask for what you want (in a polite way.) I started my online business by participating online on GE's GEnie online service. When I was ready to send them a proposal to run a small business area, I could not only talk about my credentials in general, but point to places I was already contributing to their service. I became one of the early content providers to America Online because I picked up the phone and made a cold call. I wound up with a new consulting client after I struck up a conversation with a woman sitting next to me on an airplane. Remember, people like to do business with people they know. Get the ball rolling, and keep it rolling by continually reaching out and introducing yourself to new people.

13. Embrace Digital Marketing.
Even if you’re running a local business, you need a comprehensive digital presence. At minimum you need a professional-looking website, an email list that lets you communicate with customers and prospects on a regular basis, and presence on the social media channels that your customers frequent. While you may get many of your customers by word of mouth, referrals or networking, you still need a strong digital presence. The reason: prospective customers are likely to look you up on the web before they decide whether or not to contact you. Coupons, special offers, and practical information sent to your email list can encourage customers and prospects to buy from you or make repeat purchases.


14. Never stop learning and trying new things.
What's profitable now, won't necessarily be profitable next year or 10 years from now. So, don't let yourself fall into the "this is the way I've always done things" rut. Keep your eyes and ears open for new things. Are there newer or better ways to market your products and services? Are customers asking for something you're not offering? Is there a different type of customer you should be targeting? Get answers by reading everything you can about your industry and listening to your customers.

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Science-based Web Design Tips to Crush Your Next Website Project

In the following, you will find some research-based tips and tricks on how to improve your web design.

1. Make Site Speed an Absolute Priority

It’s probably one of the least debated facts in the web design sphere that speed is important. Research has shown that it influences everything from bounce rate over user satisfaction to conversions and revenue.

2. Leverage the Fold

Whether or not there is still such a thing as the fold is part of a heated debate. Some say that because of the multitude of screen sizes these days, the fold doesn’t matter anymore. Others have a different opinion.

However, the fact is that even in 2018, people spend 57 percent of their time above the fold with a sharp decline afterwards. 74 percent of their time is dedicated on the first two screenfuls.

3. Take Advantage of Hick’s Law

Hick’s Law states that the more choices an individual has, the longer they will take to make a decision.

There’s actually a fascinating study on this phenomenon in which people in a supermarket were given more or less varieties of jam to try. In the end, those who had more choices were much less likely to end up buying some jam than the ones that had less variety to choose from.

4. Keep it Simple

Continuing with the theme of less, this also applies to your design in general. A huge study by Google has shown that visitors don’t like visual complexity. The gist: the more complex your design, the less it is perceived by visitors as beautiful.

5. Avoid Carousels, Sliders, Tabs and Accordions

Website owners love carousels. It’s probably one of the most client-requested features. Unfortunately, the research says that they are pretty useless.

One of the most mind-blowing data comes from Notre Dame University. The webmaster there noticed that the first slide on a carousel received almost 90 percent of the clicks while the rest were largely ignored.

6. Prioritize Scrolling Over Clicking

So, if you don’t compress information into sliders and/or accordions, how do you present it? The answer: just put everything in one long page, including the stuff usually tucked away. Seriously, it works.

7. Direct Attention with Visual Cues

One of the main functions of web design is to guide users. You can do that by giving different weight to different elements, thereby directing focus where you want it to go.

However, you can also use more direct visual cues to achieve this. One is by taking advantage of the fact that humans tend to look in the same direction as people they see in ads.

8. Use People in Pictures (But Avoid Stock Photos)

Besides using them to direct attention, including other people in images on your site is generally a great idea. Humans like to connect to other people, in real life as well as on the web. It’s why, for example, we have about pages on blogs.

9. Use the Right List Order

Using lists, both ordered and unordered, is a great way to make information more accessible. However, it turns out that here, too, human attention is fickle.

This is because of the so-called serial-position effect. It basically says that in a list, you are most likely to remember both the items in the beginning and at the end. The middle section, on the other hand, goes largely forgotten.

10. Leverage Social Proof

The last one of our web design tips is about the so-called conformity bias. This is the tendency of people to do as others do. That means, if a group of people approve of something, others are more likely to do that same.


CREDIT: https://torquemag.io/2018/07/web-design-tips/