The path of a business samurai: the maximum effect for one weekend

This post is for action lovers. It contains experience in launching small (and not very large) web projects aimed at making money on the Web.

How to do it, where to start, where to look for a resource - everything is consistently described and flavored with a large number of links. The upcoming weekend is the perfect time to take the first step.

Suppose you decide to make an urban social network of car lovers. Or search for the right drugs at nearby pharmacies. Or some other mega-necessary and interesting project. But the question arises: where to start (even if such a question does not arise, the approach proposed in the article will be useful to many who are already doing or planning to do their business on the Web).

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Hypothesis Testing: Idea and Tasks

Before any conscious action is always a plan. World capture plan . It begins with an idea: what do we want to get by creating a website (or business)? What is our deepest thought? The idea is usually formulated very simply, literally in one phrase: "To enable car owners to exchange relevant information in our city" or "Provide a search for drugs depending on the location of the user." But it is necessary to formulate it: the more clearly you register it, the faster you will have a working site.

After the formulation of the idea, there are specific tasks, how this idea will be implemented. Tasks should be as accurate as possible (with a measurable result - so that it is clear whether the task is completed or not), and there should not be more than 7 (if there are more tasks, then we start to merge). Best of all, if the tasks were formed 3-5 - then they will be most effectively performed. Examples of tasks: “Develop a website”, “Collect a daily audience of 10 thousand people”, “Find 50 thousand to develop a prototype”, “Get 100 thousand rubles within a month from a project”, etc.

I emphasize that this is not so much about creating a website, but about launching a new business, a small startup, for which there is still a lot of things to understand, and which needs to be tested for rationality of the idea, the size of the audience and most likely to find a monetization model ).

After the formulation of the idea and the tasks that will be able to bring it to life, there is a stage of a quick assessment of the markets in terms of audience assessment.

Audience: solving a specific business problem

No site (business) can live without users. To breathe life into our site, we must first estimate how much this life is on the web. And, most importantly, where do we look for it. To estimate the size of the audience, you need to answer a few simple questions: how many people face the problem that the site solves; how often does this happen; how many more sites solve this problem (what else do people use in similar cases).

For example, if we are talking about the search for drugs, then at least 30% of the population once a month will face this task, and every tenth at least will be ready to use the (mobile) Internet for this task. Therefore, the potential reach of the audience is about 3% of the population (only for Moscow it is about 500 thousand people).

By answering all these questions, you can evaluate the monthly audience of the planned site. At this stage, if we assume the average size of the check (or the size of the commission when viewing the drug card), then we can immediately assess the turnover of such a business.

Here it will be useful to write several portraits of typical users of the resource (it will help at the stage of promotion): gender, age, wealth, interests, favorite sites. Such a description should take no more than 1-2 A4 pages.

In addition, to estimate the size of the audience in some cases is possible in the following ways:

Path 1: liveinternet.ru

We go to the Rating sites liveinternet and choose the region and subject we need. Next, we look at the attendance of popular resources for 31 days (do not add up - we take the one closest to the idea of ​​our site on the subject). We get the first estimate.

Path 2: Keyword Statistics

We go to the statistics of keywords , we specify the region and enter a search query that can be set by our target user (solving the set task) - for example, buy medicines or find a pharmacy. For most cases, the number of impressions can be taken as a starting point (omitting a lot of amendments, which usually do not change the order of evaluation), you only need to multiply the number of requests by 1.5 (after all, only Yandex is taken into account, but not Google). Sum up all related queries is not necessary.

Engine: test functionality

Here is the most interesting, complex and sometimes impossible part of the site: how the stated idea should be implemented? What will be under the hood of the site so that our plans could be implemented? For developers, it is usually with the solution of this problem that the work on the site begins: when a brilliant idea comes, it must be immediately realized. But this brilliant idea is not always worthy of implementation (and this should be clear from the analysis carried out in the previous steps). There are several possible options.

Option 1: complex idea, there is a budget

However, any business idea can be implemented in one way or another, and when you launch a test version of a site (business) you only need to assemble a working solution, and then evaluate its economic efficiency (it may turn out that decision support is too expensive for the current market, and you need to either strongly optimize the technology, or wait a few years, when the cost will allow you to run this business).

If you do not have programming skills (or assembling a website from ready-made modules, if this is possible for your solution), then you will need to write a clear technical task, which you can assign to a freelancer or a web studio. Obviously, not so many details should be present in the technical specification, and the logic of user interaction with the site will be spelled out in terms of ensuring a minimum of functionality: after all, there is a hypothesis testing, and not a ready-made solution. Then, when it will be clear on what exactly the site earns, it can be reworked to improve and usability, and expand functionality. But not now.

Now only the most necessary functions and usage scenarios are signed, they are given with a minimum budget for implementation to the developer. And with some success exactly what was intended will be realized.

If you yourself are a developer, then choose your favorite framework - Zend, Yii, Symfony, YAF - and proceed. The main thing is to stop after the implementation of the necessary functions of the site (even if it will not work quite correctly - the time to correct errors will be during the initial promotion).

Option 2: a simple idea, have site building skills

Another option is to implement a solution based on popular open source systems - Joomla! or WordPress . Now most hosting providers offer installation of these CMS directly from the control panel (Plesk). Test hosting for a month can be ordered, for example, from Rusonyx . A month will be enough to understand how well or badly the idea works.

After installing the CMS on the hosting, you must configure the modules that will implement the previously declared functionality. Extensions for WordPress are installed in the administrative panel of the site directly (through the search for keywords or the exact name of the module). For Joomla! the situation is a bit more complicated: you need to study the extensions on extensions.joomla.org , select the appropriate version for your system (find the download link) and install via the administrative panel (using the download link).

After installing, configuring, testing extensions, you most likely choose one thing that best fits the original idea.

Option 3: a simple idea, no skills

Free hosting with WordPress (with a third-level domain) can be taken directly to wordpress.com . But there may be problems with the transfer of content when your idea shoots. And the main servers are located abroad, which adds problems with the speed of the site.

Free hosting for an online store (and not only) can be taken from any relevant provider: InSales , SiteBerry (from 120 rubles / month), WebAssyst (from 199 rubles / month, the first month is free). All configuration is done through the administrative services panel. But if necessary, change the site will be a problem when transferring the content of the pages. Therefore, it is better to consider these sites as a quick start opportunity.

Design choice: how to solve a problem

Even at the testing stage, the choice of design should be approached carefully: after all, the site interface will greatly affect the conversion, so you need, on the one hand, to devote maximum attention to it, on the other hand, to test it with a minimum of investment.

This will help a large number of free design templates posted on the Web. All you need to do is to match the main functions of the site (for example, containing the space for the search line and a large gallery of results) in the colors you like. And you need to remember that the interface of the site should help users to understand the purpose of the site, and take advantage of its main (or several main) functions. After that, the design template can be given to the developer at about the final stage of building a test site with a request to finalize it.

To search for free templates (or those that can be taken on the test version of the site) there are a large number of resources: Tempalte Monster , TemplateMo , Free CSS Templates , Joomla! 24 , etc.

Downloading and installing a ready-made template for the site is not difficult (especially if it is in the format of the selected CMS). But it is better to spend some time to bring the appearance and all installed additions to the template styles (or ask a friend / freelancer to do it).

Launch and test progress: where to start

After selecting a domain, hosting provider and launching a site already on your domain and site, you can, of course, test its fault tolerance (to understand how actively you are testing progress) - this can be done using several services, for example, Load Impact . And, knowing the features of your users, you can immediately go to the masses - and promote the project on thematic sites.

For Internet services, the most effective in terms of test promotion will be the methods of search promotion (according to inquiries, if they are low and medium competitive) and advances in social networks (on the corresponding pages and in groups). For regional projects, promotion on city and regional portals will be effective. If the budget for promotion is non-zero, then contextual advertising can also be tested (or get the coupons for the initial balance - Mail.Ru distributes such at events - and test contextual announcements for a selected audience).

Depending on the interest in the project, the cost of promotion, feedback and the increase in the number of users within 1-2 months after the start of the promotion (launch of the project), we can talk about the success of the project. And to conduct a deeper assessment of the business idea, having on hand already ready data.

Conclusion

If we estimate the cost of time to launch a new site, then it is quite possible to cope over the weekend (for example, even gathering with friends on some Hackathon ). You will spend 2-3 hours on brainstorming to concretize the idea and elaborate usage scenarios, then spend 10 hours assembling the main functionality and hosting the site, 2-5 hours to refine the appearance and another hour or two for the first presentation of the potential audience ( comprehensive promotion will, of course, take longer).

And now the question is: are you ready to spend the weekend to realize your idea and start doing your business?