Creating an Online Business: An Analysis of a Business Website - Assignment Example

Some small business owners already have their businesses up and running, either from an actual storefront or working from home (Bly 2002). Some small businesses will have catalogues of products that can be moved over to the web and purchases are either delivered to your front door or sent electronically. Others, like Alan Forrest Smith, operate a copywriting business which most likely started as a home business and now operates out of Hope Cottage in Lymm, Cheshire, England. In the case of OrangeBeetle.

com, this type of consultancy business is easy to put online because the services and products sold are based on Alan Smith’s capabilities as a copywriter for many types of businesses, large and small. In this paper, we look at Smith’s website to determine a number of aspects about his business and present a critique of his business website as seen on the Internet. This website was found by doing searches for “top small businesses in the U.K,” then changed to “top business copywriter in the U.K.” That search result brought up OrangeBeetle.

com in the first page of search results. The paper analyses this website with two major different questions, along with several sub-questions for more in-depth discussion. Part I 1. “Carry out a critical analysis of a small business website of your choice from one of the following industrial sectors: retail, consultancy, IT services, entertainment or food and beverage.” (Health care industries were also added later as a possible choice.) The business copywriting consultancy, Orange Beetle, was chosen for a number of reasons: the name Orange Beetle had a sense of difference from the others listed, giving a sense of curiosity to know more about this website and what it offered; beetle cars, made by Volkswagen, are rather hard to come by, presenting a sense of uniqueness and rarity; and finally, Orange Beetle had a sense of character, something needed in marketing and sales, for which copywriting plays a major part in presenting a product or service to the public consumer.

This is Business to Consumer (B2C) copywriting while communications that are written to sell to another business such as white papers, are Business to Business (B2B) copywriting (Bly 2002). The Website – Orange Beetle Fig. 1 (Smith 2012 http://www.orangebeetle.com) Section I - Online Marketing Planning When a business is planning to move online and develop a marketing plan, the first step is to determine the best name for the business. If the business has already been around a while, then using the same name is the best way to go.

What if someone already has your business name online? Then either consider a different address extension such as .biz or use your own name as the website address. You can also think of another name that represents your business very closely, thus making it easier for prospective clients to remember how to get to your site (Bly 2002). 1.1 Website Name The Orange Beetle, as previously noted, is pretty unusual and therefore is one you’d remember. You would also be interested in learning more about what it is.