Zoom Chat: "Targeting Your Customers" with Phylicia from Black Monarchy When you're trying to figure out who is your customer, first, you definitely look at who's your target? What is your target market? What is the offerings that you have in your space, in your store, online or brick and mortar? And seeing how that fits into your community. Then you watch to see the traction that's happening with your products, with your sales. Then you target and sometimes even have to pivot in many ways with your inventory based on what is being consumed by your market. For us, it was pretty easy to narrow down who we thought would be our target market. What we learned was actually a little bit opposite. We started off thinking, it's a pretty much an African-American base brand, so that would be our base customer, which we do have a huge, huge, and we're so grateful for our Black and African American, people of color base. But what we didn't realize is that people who love to travel opens it up very much. Our huge target now is for people who love things that are different, things that speak loudly, and people who love to experience the world and beautiful spaces, and that's our new target market.

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Zoom Chat: "Now Is The Time To Go Online" with Courtney from Elle James When you look at my story of growing, the artistian festivals were my first step of meeting my customers, learning what products sell the best, and growing my product phase. Then customers were always like, ''Well, are you online? Do you have a website?'' I would be like, ''Not yet, not yet,'' and I'm like, ''I'm making a website because I'm not going to be losing out on business.'' I decided to start my website on Wix. I will say I did that because I did my wedding website on Wix and it was easy for me.

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It’s All About Your Customers Part 2 Welcome back. I hope you were able to get a good start on gathering data for your customer personas. You'll be using this information when you do your assignment for this lesson. We need precise customer personas to help us stay focused in every area of our business. It will become more important to you as you start to develop your business product or service and create marketing materials for it. Let's say you were planning to launch an online health and wellness business that was for kids, teens, adults, and elderly people. You might think I can help everyone. The problem is you also have to market to everyone and advertise to everyone. In this case, it's four different groups; kids, teens, adults, and the elderly. Marketing and advertising to broad audiences gets expensive as you have to communicate to everyone from kids to the elderly. What if you started out your business focused on the customer that you felt most able to serve best? Let's say it's the elderly customer. Now, you're creating one message instead of four over multiple channels to be understood by one customer group, the elderly. What if you're planning to launch an online business that attracts a wide audience, like a grocery store and you have men and women, both young and old, shopping for groceries on your website and in your retail store? What is your store specialty? Well, let's say maybe it's Italian and you sell freshly baked bread or homemade sauce, or you have the world's biggest olive assortment. You might sell individually prepared meals and family style and of course, you sell ingredients for customers to make their own food. This business owner would create a persona for the typical younger woman and older woman, and the typical younger man and older man, who will be shopping at their store. Maybe one of them wants prepared foods while another only makes their own food. Maybe one buys in bulk and the other shops almost daily. They can have all sorts of differences but the one thing they have in common is that they all love Italian food. When you figure out who you're selling to, and then focus that audience as clearly as you can, it will really help you shape your business and make decisions that will help you succeed. Back when I did my personas in 2016, when I was planning my business, I saw them more as a group of like-minded 20 - 40 year-old men and women who were drawn to modern design and like a pop of color, appreciate quality and easy care. Four years later, I've learned that my actual customers are older and mostly women and for the most part, use Facebook. Your assignment for lesson 2 will be to create 3 - 4 personas for your business. You'll see the template in our PowerPoint deck under lesson 2. Where you see the word customer, put in the name that you gave your customer, place your photo in the box that says photo of your customer. Replace my questions with your answers. Do the best you can to get very detailed. Your personas can change over time as you get more information about who is actually buying from you but for now, create customers who you think will buy from you.

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Student Activity: Build Your Persona To prepare you to build your personas for this week’s assignment, please take 15 minutes to fill in the data for one of your business’s personas. There is space to fill in up to 3 or 4 personas. Please download and use the "Persona Data" spreadsheet below to complete your activity.

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It’s All About Your Customers Welcome back. Now that you know what type of business you're going to launch online and have thought about what to name it, let's work on figuring out who your customer is. In lesson 2, we'll talk about who your customer is and why it's important to have a clear vision of who they are. The more detailed and focused your customer description is, the more focused your product or service development becomes as well as your marketing, advertising, and PR. The broader your customer description is, the more likely you are to misjudge what they want. You'll spend time and money recreating your business to find out. To start, imagine who this customer is, who will buy your product, use your service, or subscribe to your content. This exercise actually has a name. We call it creating personas. Personas are made up of characters that you create to represent the different customer types you think will buy from you. I actually love this part of business planning because it will give you examples of people you and your team can refer to as you make real business decisions. You'll give your personas names, for instance, Mario, Dana, and Carlos. When you write content or copy for your website, you'll be thinking, ''Will Dana understand this the way I've written it," or when you're developing products or services for your business, you'll ask yourself, ''Are these right for Carlos?'' When designing both your website and your products, you'll be able to use a manageable and memorable cast of 3-4 personas to focus your decisions rather than considering thousands of opinions from all of your potential customers. Personas really help you make decisions that are right for your business. Let's look at a few examples. This first example was done for a coffee shop business. Right away, you can see by the picture of Anna that she's a young professional, just look at her Polish jacket. This coffee shop owner likely went online and searched images of 20-something-year-old women until they found a photo that looks like a person that they can imagine walking into their coffee shop or shopping with them online. Then you can see there's a whole description of a day in the life of Anna. You'll see an important detail in there. She lives on coffee. You can see details about Anna's background, her finances, and her online behaviors which become important to any business owner when they start to pay for ads online. If I'm this coffee shop owner, I'm focusing my ads on Instagram rather than all the other social platforms because Instagram is her main social activity. Under what she's looking for, we get an idea of the type of coffee shop that would appeal to her, a place to decompress and a quiet place to study. The business owner is thinking about Anna and giving her these attributes. The business owner is also researching who goes to her competitor's coffee shop. What are the competitor's customers like? Does the business owner hope to allure them away? Or is the business owner creating a wholly different type of coffee shop? We can see that Anna is influenced by friends and colleagues rather than famous people. She seems to read a lot and not watch a lot of TV. She likes magazines, blogs, articles, and design publications. If I owned this coffee shop, I would put some energy into writing a blog that has articles that Anna reads about her interests and then shares with her network. We'll talk more about blogs in the lessons ahead. We can see that she likes brands like Starbucks, H&M, West Elm, and Target. I should consider how these brands advertise. What I would find is they all have very straightforward messaging. If I do create ads, say for Facebook, then I would make sure to keep them clear and simple to appeal to Anna. She has hopes and dreams. One that stands out is to not have to worry about finances. I bet a loyalty card where she gets a free cup of coffee after 10 cups would appeal to Anna. I hope you're beginning to see how personas like this can help you make real decisions to build your business and reach your customers. Let's look at a few more. This persona is for an online bookstore. You see it looks completely different from Anna's. That's because there are many ways to design a persona. Let's look at what they have in common. First, there's a picture of Nerdy Nina. Whereas Anna's title represented her occupation- student, this design captures Nina's personality. Nina embraces her nerdy side. Anna's quote was, ''I need to be able to go somewhere to relax, refocus, and get inspired without breaking the bank.'' Nina's is, ''The book is way better than the movie.'' Nina is 100 percent about books. For an online book business, there could be another persona who dislikes giant booksellers like Amazon and Barnes & Nobles. Their quote might be, ''I'm all about small businesses.'' The online book persona is shorter than the coffee shop persona, but it still has key information that will help the business owner, for instance, Nina's age, her job, and family life. This persona lists her goals. Nina wants to discover new books and find unique stories. We also learn that she's frustrated by missing the release date of books, keeping track of her favorite book series, and making space in her home for new books. As the online bookstore owner, I could plan to do regular email campaigns to keep my Nerdy Ninas aware of launches, new books, new authors, and so on. I could do a blog about book storage and the best bookshelves. One important thing Nina's persona is missing is her preferred social media platforms. Where does Nina spend her time on social? Knowing where your customers spend time online is necessary to focus where you best spend money on ads. Let's turn to our last example of a persona. You'll notice it's completely different than the first two. It's very visual and free-form. This persona features two people, Mario, the Studio Consultant, and Eliza, the PR manager. Mailchimp, an email marketing business you might be familiar with, did these personas. You can see that they took a very creative approach to their personas and went very visual. The photo chosen for Mario shows him dressed ready to go to the office. We see he has a creative flair with his hat and multiple stripe combo on his shirt and vest. His style is playful and creative while still saying office. Turning to Eliza, we can see that she's very well-groomed. Her hair is blown out and curled. We also see a full-on tattoo. Tattoos don't work in all office environments but are totally accepted in creative work environments. We don't have their exact ages or see their home life, but we can see they're Millennials and can draw assumptions about how their life outside of work is. For a business that solves mass emailing and fun creative ways, Mailchimp might not need all the details to align their business thinking to work for Mario and Eliza. What's the takeaway? Mailchimp is targeting customers who are educated, career-oriented, independent problem-solvers, creative people in marketing and management who are trying to overcome old office and build business culture. The Mailchimp team can use these personas to ask questions that test their ideas of their customers, like, would Mario like using our website? Is it smart and creative enough? Should we make it more playful and more relevant for Eliza? The point is that the photos you pick and the details in them are important. They go a long way in explaining who your customer is. For the student activity, to prepare you to build your personas for this week's assignment, please take 15 minutes and use the Persona Worksheet provided to fill in data for one of your businesses' personas. There is space to fill in up to 3-4 personas.

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Zoom Chat: "Introduction to Zandra Beauty" My name is Zandra Cuttingham. I'm 20 years old, born and raised in Buffalo, New York. I am the CEO and founder of Zandra Beauty, which is a premium plant based skin care company that I created at young age of nine years old. When I was nine, I was obsessed with lip balms to a point where, my dad refused to buy me more and that he was my number one supplier. That inspired me to learn how to create my own and fill a void for girls like me who wanted a product made by a team dedicated to them that, had a mission. But also was made with plant-based ingredients that was safe for my skin. Now Zandrew today is sold in stores across the nation. We are in big chain stores such as Target, Wegman's, Whole Foods, just to name a few. We are all about educating and empower girls and women across the globe.

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Zoom Chat: "Introduction to Elle James" Hi, my name is Courtney Nelson Benton, and I'm the owner of Elle James Decor here in Buffalo, New York. I have been in business going on three years, and I'm currently in my brand new store location. This is my very first location, and I've been painting, and you guys can see the tape on the windows. So I'm still covering it up for the public, but super excited to open this.

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Zoom Chat: "Introduction to Stitch Buffalo" Hi, My name is Dawne Hoek. I'm the executive director of Stitch Buffalo. Stitch Buffalo is a 501C3 community organization located on the West Side of Buffalo and we have three separate programs are number one in Primary program is the Refugee Women's Workshop and this is a program where refugee women can come. They can learn skills in the textile arts whether it's weaving, embroidery, sewing. They can get the supplies that they need to complete projects. They can choose which projects they'd like to make. And then when they finish that they can put it into the retail shop for sale. And when that item sells, they receive 60% or more of that sale. So this is a way for them to have some financial income for themselves without having to get a full-time job in some kind of factory work. The second component to Stitch Buffalo or program is second stitch and that's a reselling of fabric yarns, knitting needles, sewing machines. Anything to help you create within the textile arts in our third program, our community workshops and we offer a wide range of different workshops in the textile arts. So we offer weaving. We offer embroidery. We offered dyeing with indigo. We offer block printing. And so those are the three components of Stitch Buffalo.

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Zoom Chat: "Introduction to Classic Knot" My name is Shelden Gibbs and I am 14. I'm the owner and operator of the Buffalo based company called Classic Knot, and I specialize in handcrafted bow ties and men's accessories. Basically, what got me started is, a long time ago, when I was a little kid, my mom kept me well dressed. We would attend church, we'd attend different things that you had to get well dressed up. As I got older, and as I developed my own style, it stuck with me. As I'll go to stores and stuff and try to find different clothing, I didn't see any ties or any bow ties that I like, so I came up with a solution and that was to cut up my old dress shirts and make my own bow ties. At first I didn't start automatically selling them, I just wore them for me. I made them and then wore them for myself. Then as I go out in public, I got different complements and then, I just started my company. I might as well turn this into a company because every time I go out, somebody says, "Wow, look at that bow tie. Where did you get it from?"

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What is Your Online Business? Welcome to launch your online business. Launching an online business or moving your existing business online is a very exciting adventure. My name is Joan DeCollibus, and I'll be your teacher for the lessons to come. I studied graphic design in college and started my career as a producer designer of meetings and events for corporate clients. My team and I would create visuals to support corporate business meetings that could span for days. In the beginning of my career, back in the '80s, all of the artwork I created was done on a drawing board by hand using film and photography and slide projection. In the 1990s, personal computers were invented and seemingly overnight we began to create all of our art and design work on the computer. As I gained more and more skills in computer graphics and interactive animation, it occurred to me and two of my friends, Glenn and David, that we could start our own business. With our small investment of $15,000 and a handful of clients, we rented an office in Boston and hired an intern. With the help of a lawyer, we incorporated our name, Planet Interactive Inc. and drew up a partnership agreement. What I distinctly remember is we did not do a business plan. Ouch. I really recommend doing a business plan. So before we signed the lease, we did a rough estimate of what we thought each of our clients would and could pay us for the year and we added that up. The numbers look good, so we took the plunge. Back in the early '90s, very few people had our skills. We had a very unique offering, digital media or designed, delivered digitally, not through print. Through our existing clients and word of mouth, we have a steady stream of business. I develop my product line in 2017 and launched online using Shopify in 2018. I named the company Rubina.NYC. The name became part of my brand story. Rubina means redhead in Italian a node to my heritage and my little dog and fit model Ruby is a red poodle. I'll circle back to my business as we go along. Launch an online business is a 16 lesson course. Most of our lessons we'll have a quiz, a student activity, and an assignment. You'll gain an understanding of different business models so that you can pick yours. I'll cover naming strategies for your business, as well as creating customer personas. We'll go through steps for creating your brand and how to develop a unique value proposition or your UVP for your business. I'll share the steps you need to take to launch your web site and production do's and don'ts for copy-writing and photography. I'll cover a pre-launch checklist and website maintenance and some of the basics of marketing, advertising, and PR. As the course goes along, you'll take what you're learning and create a pitch deck about your business that you share with potential partners, investors, or team members. Let's get started. What kind of business do you want to launch and what will you name it? Creating an online business presence is good for business. When we need something, what's the first thing that we do? We either ask a friend or search online. If our friends don't have an answer, Google usually does. Your online presence will provide your customers information about your business and it will help build your brand and generate revenue. There are many business models for online businesses. To find the right one, you need to ask yourself, will my business be a service, product, subscription or content business. Let's go over the different types to help you understand which type makes sense for you. A service business is where you have a service to sell and will collect a payment for this service on your website. Examples of services could be a salon, a spar, coaching, tutoring, elder or pet care, online therapy, yoga class. The important distinction to make here is that you are selling a service, not a product. You may have an existing brick and mortar business that sells anything from laundry to manicure services, and you want to bring it online. Once your business is online, your customers can book and pay for their service through your e-commerce platform using a touchless checkout process. This will provide a safe and easy way for you to check them out. With online payments, you can charge clients without having a face-to-face interaction, and the exchange of credit cards, checks, or cash. Let's look at a few examples of service businesses. The Art Studio founded by Rebecca Schweiger is a Manhattan-based business that offers art classes at their brick and mortar studio or online. You can browse through classes and pay online. Dirty Gloves based in the Bronx is a business that lets you schedule an appointment to have your drain cleaned and you can pay online, and RuffCity founded by Heather and Stacia is a Manhattan-based dog walking service. Because pet care is a bit more high-touch, they have an orientation process where you meet your dog walker before you sign up and pay online. So let's move on to product businesses. If you have a grocery store or a restaurant, those are product businesses because you are selling a product like a pound of butter or a hamburger. Other types of product businesses include apparel, home goods, garden, health-related, auto or pet products. Again the list is endless. Your company may be in the business of selling products you design and manufacture like my company Refina, or you could be selling products that you are buying wholesale and selling on your site. Let's look at some examples. Absolute Trophies based in Queens sells all sorts of trophies that you can have customized and purchase online. Ojala Threads founded by Ramona Ferreyra in the South Bronx has built a product business that's also very involved with the community. They have a line of apparel inspired by Hispanic heritage that you can buy online. Harlem Heirloom founded by Jammie Waldron in Harlem offers customers handmade soy candles. Another model for online businesses is subscription-based model. In this case, a subscription could be for either a service or a product. Subscription businesses require the customer to sign up for products or services they receive or have access to either monthly or yearly. An early example of a subscription service is Birchbox, founded in Manhattan by Hayley Barna and Katia Beauchamp where customers pay a monthly fee and receive a box of beauty product samples. Another example of a subscription business is Blue Apron, also started in Manhattan. They deliver the ingredients for customers to cook meals at home. Barkbox started by Carly Strife in Manhattan delivers dog owners a monthly goodie box filled with dog treats, dog toys, and other dog products that fit in the box. It's like Birchbox, but for dogs. The last online business category we'll cover is a content business. These online businesses create content that is curated to an audience that has shared interests. It's like a magazine, and the businesses make their money through advertising dollars. For example, PureWow founded by Ryan Harwood in Manhattan caters to a millennial female audience that likes to read about fashion, beauty, family, recipes, and home. The businesses articles may include branded content, meaning content that features a certain product. The product is talked about in a natural way so that readers don't feel like they're being advertised to. Rather they feel like they're getting an inside scoop on what they wanted to learn anyway. Pure Wow has many competitors like Bustle and PopSugar, all in the beauty lifestyle category. There are many online content companies that focus on different interests like sports, travel, cooking, finance, and so on. Another example of a content business is MITU, a Latino focused lifestyle site. You can see the paid advertising content in the bottom row. It looks like the rest of the content and it's naturally integrated into the overall content even though it's paid for. Four your student activity, take 15 minutes to look through these online businesses and see what inspires you. When you look at these websites, think about what they're trying to sell and how their potential customers would feel when looking at their websites. Ask yourself the following questions: do I understand what their business is? Do I feel I can trust them? Is it easy to get to the checkout page and make my purchase? Would I tell a friend about them?

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Meet the Business Owners Now that you've finished the first videos, I'd like to introduce you to entrepreneurs who've built successful online businesses. The business owners have lived the lessons I teach in this course. They're sharing their experiences to help you learn from their successes and challenges. The following videos introduce you to them and their online business. You'll hear from them throughout the course, whenever we cover a key topic.

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Open Your Business Bank Account Welcome back. Now that you have a business name and a domain name, let's get your business banking setup. You need to formally register your business with your state so that you can ultimately open a bank account in your business name. New York City has a lot of resources to guide you through this process. First, you'll need to choose a legal structure. Corporations, limited liability companies, and limited partnerships register with New York State, and general partnerships and sole proprietorships register with the appropriate county clerk. In the student activity, I include a link where you can learn the details of these different business structures. Once you pick one, you'll apply for an employer identification number, your EIN, also known as your Federal Tax ID number. Finally, you'll need to register as a sales tax vendor with the New York State Department of Taxation in order to sell products or services in New York. The link I'm sharing to you also explains insurance for business. I recommend that you get insurance for your business to protect you from loss, lawsuits or fines of any kind. Once you have your business registered and an EIN number, you can open your business bank account. Check around with different banks to see what they offer you in terms of business accounts. Some offer free checking and low monthly balanced minimums. Once you have your account numbers, you'll be able to link your eCommerce payments to your business banking account. We'll cover setting up your shopping cart in lesson 10. For the assignment, over the course of your class, you will build a PowerPoint deck that will be a roadmap for launching your online business. You can use this presentation to explain your new business to a variety of people, from potential investors and employees to your family and friends. It will also be a helpful tool for you, the business owner, to refer to as you build your business and create your brand. The good news is, I have created the template for you. All you have to do is fill in the blanks. For your first assignment, you will be naming your business and choosing a domain name. Fill out the slides for lesson 1. Thanks for coming to the first class and good luck with your assignment.

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What is Your Online Business? Part 2 0:00 Welcome back. I hope you had fun looking at these websites and saw the differences between the service, product, subscription, and content businesses. Along with understanding the purpose of each site, you may have noticed the different tone and voice in each, the use of photography, the use of copy, color, and topography choices, and how it all added up to make you think and feel in a certain way. We'll be learning a lot more about how the look and feel of a website affects our inclination to buy or not to buy, when we talk about branding in lesson 2. Now that you've decided what kind of business you're going to start, let's begin thinking about what to name it. Your business name doesn't have much value, if your customers can't remember it. Find a name that's simple, easy to pronounce, and evocative. Keep your name short and sweet. Whatever name you choose, just make sure it can be easily spelled and searched for online. Let's take a look at the naming checklist. First of all, make it easy to say out loud. Can everyone pronounce it? Is it easy to spell? Avoid cute, misspelled words in your name and remember, you want people to be able to find you online. Does it convey some meaning of your business? Can you get it trademarked? Choose a name that's available and can be trademarked. Depending on how big you want to build your business, this can become an important consideration. It's worth checking in with the trademark office at USPTO.GOV before settling on a name. It's unlikely that your competitors will choose exactly the same name as you do, but if they do, customers will be confused. Without a trademark name, you will have no legal grounds to stand on to stop your competitor from using it. Does it have meaning? Don't use a generic name that doesn't mean anything. For instance, eight minute abs and 5-hour energy take advantage of details such as numbers and days. An email marketing tool name their brand, you send it, because that's exactly how the tool works. You use their tool and send an email. I chose the name for my brand, ruffina.nyc off of my brand story. Rufina means redhead in Italian, and my dog has red hair, and I liked that it had a nod to a dog bark in the name, rough and that nod to my Italian ancestry. All Good. But really not specific enough. No one's searching Ruffina, but millions of people are searching dog. I'm strongly considering rebranding and adding dog to My name, ruffinadog.nyc. I would show up in search way better than I do now. Live and Learn. Yes, but I do consider it one of my most expensive mistakes, and I don't want you to make the same one. Is the domain name available? Now that you have a great name for your business, let's make sure you can get a domain name. Your domain name is your websites URL name. My favorite place to research and buy domain names is GoDaddy.com. There's a fee to buy a domain name. No matter who you buy from. Other places, you can buy a domain name from are domain.com, Bluehost.com, Namecheap.com, are just a few. You can also buy your domain name from your e-commerce platform that you sign up with like shopify.com, square.com, or Wix.com. What domain extension is best for your business? For many years, domain extensions were limited to.com for company,.edu for education,.gov for governmental agencies,.mil for military,.net for networks,.org for non-profit organization. Over time, more domain names became available to allow people to be able to choose from more potential names, and be more specific about their business. Now there are domain extensions from a to z for almost anything you can think of. For instance,.agency ,.accountant,.baby,.beer,.boutique,.online,.wedding,.xyz, even.yoga and.zone. If you've had a baby clothing business whose name was Clothes For Baby, you could choose your URL to be clothesforbaby.com. The fee to buy it for one year would be $3,000, and then $20 each year thereafter. Meanwhile, clothesfor.baby would only cost you $20 for the first year. clothesfor.baby is a way more affordable name and it's shorter, which could come in handy on labels and business cards. But customers are still thinking.com, and they may have trouble remembering your URL and finding you online, if you go with.baby. Domain sellers assign the highest price to the most straightforward name that ends in.com. If you feel comfortable veering from.com, you can save money. If you feel comfortable changing the spelling of a common word in your name, for instance, using B-A-B-E instead of B-A-B-Y, you can buy clothes for baby.com for 1199, or the first year. You'll just forever be spelling your name, B-A-B-E, not y. As a small business owner, I would likely go for using.baby over the cheaper price on that one. Ruffina.com was not available. I ended up choosing the extension.NYC, because my products are designed and made in New York City, and that I saw as a marketing benefit, and that I really wanted to reinforce. Choosing your brand name can feel like a daunting task, but it's absolutely crucial to put time and thought into naming your brand. That's how customers will come to know, recognize, and talk about you. If the names too difficult to remember, you're missing out on loads of word of mouth marketing that doesn't cost you a single penny. For the student activity, start thinking about what to name your business. Visit any of the domain register sites and try some names out. See if the name you want and the extension you want is available. Look on USPTO.gov to see if the name you picked can be trademarked. Have some fun with it and I hope you find some names you like.

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Student Activity: Naming Your Online Business Take five minutes and test out some names for your business. 1.Give your business name some thought and go to https://godaddy.com to try out the names that you like for business and see what if your name is available. As you enter names for your business, GoDaddy’s website will respond with a price for the name you entered or alternatives for a similar name. Who knows, you may like one of the names they offer up even better than the one you thought of. Write down the options that look good to you. Enter your name on USPTO.gov to see if it is already trademarked by someone else. If the name you have chosen is already taken by someone else, it will show up in their list and you should avoid using that name.

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Take fifteen minutes to look through these online businesses and see what inspires you.  When you look at these websites, think about what they’re trying to sell and how their potential customers would feel when looking at their website.   Ask yourself the following questions: Do I understand what their business is? Do I feel I can trust them? Is it easy to get to the checkout page to make my purchase? Would I tell a friend about them? Dirty Gloves: https://www.dirtyglovesservices.com/ Bark Box: https://www.barkbox.com/ Pure Wow: https://www.purewow.com/ Please feel free to use the attached 4.1 Business Worksheet

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Student Activity: Branding Your Business In addition to the resources referenced in 'Creating Your Brand' please read the following articles to learn more about creating your brand: Everything You Need to Know About Picking and Using Brand Colors How to Write a Persuasive About Us Page (With Examples and a Template) Everything You Need to Know About Picking and Using Brand Colors - Venngage Everything You Need to Know About Picking and Using Brand Colors - Venngage

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Zoom Chat: "The Many Uses Of A Pitch Deck" with Phylicia From Black Monarchy Having a really good pitch deck is so important, and here's why. There are multiple uses for your pitch deck. You can add some pretty pictures and fun coloring and nice music for your family who are interested in investing in your business, or you can go the strict black and white route for those who want to know what your bottom line is, what are your numbers, and how they can make money off of your brands and your products. But having a really good pitch deck will give you the confidence to not only have your business, whether it be online or as a brick-and-mortar, but really have it in your pocket to present at any time where there's someone who might actually want to invest in your company. Make sure your pitch deck is together.

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Zoom Chat: "The Many Uses Of A Pitch Deck" with Phylicia From Black Monarchy Having a really good pitch deck is so important, and here's why. There are multiple uses for your pitch deck. You can add some pretty pictures and fun coloring and nice music for your family who are interested in investing in your business, or you can go the strict black and white route for those who want to know what your bottom line is, what are your numbers, and how they can make money off of your brands and your products. But having a really good pitch deck will give you the confidence to not only have your business, whether it be online or as a brick-and-mortar, but really have it in your pocket to present at any time where there's someone who might actually want to invest in your company. Make sure your pitch deck is together.

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Creating Your Brand Welcome back to launch your online business. Now that you've thought about what type of business you'll launch, what you might name it, and who your customer personas are, let's learn how to communicate with your customer. In today's marketplace, there are a lot of competitors. Your business needs to stand out and be memorable to potential customers so they think of you when they need your product, your service subscription, or content. In lesson 3, creating your brand, it's all about branding. Branding is the way your business communicates with your customer. Everything your customer sees, hears, and touches as they interact with your brand are brand touchpoints. Your brand touchpoints represent your business, they stand for your values and shape your customers perception of your brand. Business and brand are interchangeable. Your brand is your business, and your business is your brand. My top three things to consider when developing your brand are, brand promise, brand identity, and brand story. These essential elements will get you started on the road to developing your brand. Consistency across these elements will help you build brand trust with your customers and maintain their focus on what your brand, your business is all about. Let's start with brand promise. Brand promise is the statement you make to your customers about what they can expect from every interaction with your brand. It's not just about your products or your services, but it's also about your people and your organization as a whole. It's a promise of the unique value and experience your customers can expect to receive every time they interact with your business. The more you can deliver on your promise, the stronger your brand value is in the minds of your customers. When writing your brand promise, try answering the question, what do you do for whom? Let's look at some famous brands and see how they do it. So Nike, to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. What do you do? Bring inspiration and innovation to. Who do you do it for? Every athlete in the world. H&M, more fashion choices that are good for people, the planet, and your wallet. So what do you do? More fashion choices. Who do you do it for? People, planet and your wallet. They really make it look easy, don't they? Now let's think about your business. For instance, if you have a bodega that you want to take online, your brand promise could be groceries for the neighborhood. What do you do? Groceries. Who do you do it for? Customers in the neighborhood. Groceries for the neighborhood is a broad brand promise. You're promising to provide groceries for the neighborhood. That's why you're in business. While it's a good promise and a worthy endeavor, lots of markets in the neighborhood could say the very same thing. I challenge you to get more specific. What sets you apart from your competitors? For example, you could have organic groceries for the neighborhood, farm fresh groceries for the neighborhood, locally grown groceries for the neighborhood. If you go with organic, your food must be all organic because you promised it would be. Same for farm fresh. Is it really? Locally grown, you should be able to name the farm it came from. Once you've written your brand promise, use it to shape all of your marketing and advertising materials. Remember, whatever you promise you have to deliver or you will erode trust and lose customers and we don't want that. My brand promise for Ruffina is we design clothes for little dogs that we would wear if we were dogs, and we always deliver on that. Now let's move on to brand identity. Your brand identity is how your brand looks visually to your customers. Your logo, the style of typography, the colors you feature, your packaging, all make up your brand identity. Let's start with your logo. Your logo becomes a recognizable visual symbol to which your customers can easily identify. For example, the Nike Swoosh, the Apple used by Apple Computers, and the Amazon smile. Nike Swoosh represents the winged Greek goddess of victory and competition. Nike's first products developed back in the '70s where running shoes that helped athletes win races. The logo developed in 1971 has changed very little over the years. The enduring brand recognition has helped them earn and keep brand trust. When we see the swoosh, we know it's Nike. Now, Apple's first logo back in 1970, was an image of Isaac Newton, the man who revolutionized science with discoveries of gravity, sitting under an apple tree. Newton discovered gravity when an apple fell on his head. Steve Jobs, Apple's founder. Though we like that idea, he quickly got tired of the logo because even though it showed Newton was a nod to knowledge, he thought it was a little too old fashion looking. Apple's logo evolved into a rainbow colored apple, signifying the first Apple computer screens to display color. It was modernized overtime to the simple black apple, and finally, today we see the updated apple that has the luminous 3D feel. The apple symbolizes knowledge. The bite out of it is a nerdy nod to computer term byte. Amazon's logo was created to represent the message that it sells, everything from A to Z. The arrow connects the two letters to represent the smile that customers would experience from shopping on Amazon.com. Now, let's look at some examples of New York City logos. The Lobster Pound has a whimsical tow truck pulling a lobster. Fat Witch a baking company literally uses a fat witch. Brooklyn Barn, a clothing company uses a barn door, and MOSCOT an eyewear brand uses very distinct eyeglasses. Gotham Greens delivers food to your home. They have a very simple and clever logo. Then my favorite Russ & Daughters, [inaudible] uses a fish integrated with typography. Shake Shack and New York eatery incorporates a hamburger, and [inaudible] construction uses an I-beam. Incorporating a graphic into your logo can make your brand more memorable and recognizable. The next element of brand identity is typography. What font feels like your brand? Are you big and bold, soft and swirly, personal or business? The way a font looks says a lot about your brand. There are thousands of fonts to choose from. If you're using typography in your logo, I recommend using fonts that are very readable. For your website. I recommend using fonts that are offered by the platform that you choose to build on. The fonts used by platforms are designed for screen and are most readable. For consistency, use these same fonts for your packaging and any print materials you make like business cards. Let's take a look at Google Fonts. It's a great tool to see how your brand name looks in different fonts. You can enter your brand name, or your tagline to get an idea of how it looks. You can find this tool at fonts.google.com. The right color shows off your brand's personality more than just a visual cue to your brand, like the McDonald's golden arches. Color conveys emotions, feelings, and experiences. Blue can be all business. Red for adventure and strength. Yellow for knowledge and light. Green can represent eco-friendly. Whatever color you pick, just remember to stick with them. Consistency and branding is so important. Imagine if Blue Bottle changed their color scheme to pink. The name wouldn't make sense anymore. They'd have to change their name to pink bottle. Anyway, there is no right or wrong answer with color. It should just make sense to you and your customer. An important tip is to make sure that the logo you design or have designed also works in black and white. Often, if your logo appears in print publications like the newspaper, or if you're featured as a sponsor of an event, your logo will need to look good in black and white. Finally, if you have a product or a subscription business, your packaging is a big part of your brand identity. Your packaging provides a unique identity for your product. It should not only keep your products safe from damage, but also fit your brand and appear different from your competitors packaging. When your customers order online from your business, remember, the first physical contact they have with your brand is that package that you've shipped to them. This is a unique opportunity for your brand to make a favorable impression and strengthen your brand recognition. Although packaging is usually discarded, consider that some customers will hold on to packaging if they like it's look or feel. Maybe they'll even reuse it when giving a gift to someone else. A couple of tips for packaging. Put your contact info somewhere on the package. Make it easy for customers to reach out to you if they need you. Do not put the product price on your packaging as if your prices change over time, this will also make your packaging obsolete, and that can get very expensive. Now, let's move on to brand story. Your brand story is another key element of your brand. Your story is a simple narrative that includes all the facts and feelings that are created by your brand. Unlike an advertisement that's meant to have a call to action such as "Buy this product,'' your brand story inspires an emotional reaction from your customer. When you're writing your brand story, speak directly to your personas and tell them about how you got started. People shop with brands they like and identify with. Sharing where you came from, where you are headed, what your worldview or philosophy is allows your customers to connect with your brand, and that connection builds trust. Your story has to be authentic and honest. Customers are really good at seeing through brands that don't feel real. When you lose the trust of your customers, you'll lose their business. Let's look at some examples of brand stories told by some of my favorite New York brands. We can start with Baked by Melissa. I love her tagline, "Make life sweeter." You all know those little tiny cupcakes. ''Today and every day, we empower women to grow and achieve success, not only within our company, but as students, hard working moms and everything in between. We are always looking for new ways to give back to our communities and our planet. We've partnered with Girls Inc. Every Mother Counts, Dress for Success, and many more amazing teams that share our desire to make a positive impact for women everywhere.'' So I want to have a positive impact on women everywhere, I'll buy her cupcakes, it's easy for me. Now, let's move on to Warby Parker. Their tagline, ''Good eyewear, good outcome.'' You'll see what I mean after hearing their brand story, "We believe that buying glasses should be easy and fun. It should leave you happy and good looking with money in your pocket. We also believe that everyone has the right to see. Almost one billion people worldwide lack access to glasses, which means that 15 percent of the world's population cannot effectively learn or work. To help address this problem, Warby Parker partners with non-profits like VisionSpring to ensure that for every pair of glasses sold, a pair is distributed to someone in need." Well, I have to say I love that idea and I want to help people see too, count me in. Then lastly, Chrome Industries. Their tagline, "Useful Durable Gear. Made for the City." Again, you'll understand that tagline when I read you their story. I won't read the whole thing, but, "Over two decades ago, we made our first Chrome bag with a Juki sewing machine, a few yards of industrial grade nylon, military grade truck tarpaulin, and the commitment to make durable, useful gear that works on and off the bike. We didn't have money to make a buckle that could hold the weight of a loaded messenger bag, so we salvaged seat belt buckles out of junkyard cars. An icon was born." You get the story. They go on to say that they're interested in durable goods that last a long time, and they're totally committed to it, so I also buy their bags. If I need a good strong bag, I look to Chrome because I like where they're coming from and I like how that they're interested in re-using things and not making crummy goods that fall apart in a heartbeat. Take 15 minutes and start reading the articles I found for you to help you learn more about creating your brand. Save these links for future reference.

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Zoom Chat: "Defining a Brand" with Courtney from Elle James I guess, my brand is really good vibes and positive energy. All of that is based around home decor and sage smudge sticks, really. Those are my biggest selling products. When I'm selling a product, I'm really not selling the products, I'm trying to sell the feeling you'll get from the products. When you're burning a sage stick, you're clearing up negative energy. You're clearing the staleness out of the environment. We all have staleness in our houses right now from just being in here day, after day, after day. I know when I have an argument with my husband, and I see him pull out a sage stick, that's going to immediately make me a little bit more forgiving. [LAUGHTER] I'm like, "You know what? At least that man is trying." It helps relationships, it helps your family environment, it's cleansing your air. I think what I've learned it's not about this is a beautiful sage stick, and it looks great on your mantel. It's about, this sage stick is going to make you feel good. It's going to help your house be healthier and happier. That's what my brand is about. It's about spreading positive energy and good vibes.

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Articles referenced in the Creating Your Brand video include: Brand Promise link: https://www.powerreviews.com/blog/brand-promise-examples/ Brand Colors link: https://venngage.com/blog/brand-colors/ How to Write an "About Us" page  link: https://www.shopify.com/blog/how-to-write-an-about-us-page

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Creating Your Brand Part 2 Welcome back. I hope you found the articles interesting. I'm always inspired by how brands put together their promise, identity, and story. It's really helpful to look at examples and learn from them. Now that you are familiar with the deck you are building, use what we've learned about branding to fill out the slides for lesson 3 in your deck. You will be creating slides for your brand promise, brand identity, and your brand story. Thanks for coming to the third class and good luck with your assignment. See you for lesson 4: what makes your brand different?

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Zoom Chat: "Social Change as Part of Your Brand" with Zandra from Zandra Beauty I think it's important. I feel like we're a social change company, so I feel like it only makes sense and just being who I am. I'm a girl's rights advocate and I've been with the International Girl campaign and also the Girl Up through United Nations since I was 13. Play video starting at ::30 and follow transcript0:30 The whole idea and the mission behind Zandra is to educate and empower young girls, and to help them take advantage to get all the access they need to it, because understanding that these options and this freedom and this access is not available to girls in other parts of the world, and it's just actually sad. When I found that out, I was like, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe this," and I wanted to make sure every girl that had the access here, with America being free and all, understanding that even if some areas here at home in the US a lot of girls in certain demographics are saying, some girls I even look like me are not targeted in a way and don't have the opportunities to get the access that they need, that they say is available to them, if that makes sense. Understanding that we have that barrier at home, here in the US and understanding that that's a problem. Understanding that, we try to do that and incorporate that in business and honestly I feel that with Zandra, I was trying to find something that made, Zandra does more than just the typical lotion and soap bar and stuff. Yes, the products are great, but what is the brand going to stand for? It came at a perfect time because I figured I wanted that to represent who I was, and then I'm growing up and able to have more of a voice and understand what's going on in society, social media is such a big thing. Understanding that we are going to speak on certain topics that's going on that not only affects me and my community, but just women and being a black woman, the black community and just being a woman in business, how that affects our future generation and then the current generation is happening right now. Understanding that and understanding that we want to connect, we want our customers to know that we care about certain things, that we're not going to stand for certain things and that we respect being a part of. Sometimes customers can feel that since you're part of the corporate world, or the business world or whatever, you get sucked in and you got to don't really care about the people, or the customers and stuff and I don't want it to be a barrier like that, because it's not true. We're still a small business at heart, we would be nothing without our customers and I believe that we should take a stand and we should stand for anything. I feel like it's really important to know that they know that we care and showing that and knowing that we care about what the things that they care about too. I'm leaving that section open, let us know what you want us to talk about or you wanted to share about and all that good stuff. I'm keeping the conversation open both ways.

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Use what we have learned about branding to fill out the slides in your Pitch Deck. You will be creating slides for your brand promise, brand identity, and your brand story.

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What Makes Your Business Different From Your Competitors? Welcome back. I hope that your name and branding are taking shape. In lesson 4, we're going to look at how you can make your business stand out from your competitors. You will create a unique value proposition or a UVP and a tagline to go with it. What makes your business different from your competitors? With so many businesses starting up and, or owners who are taking their brick and mortar businesses online, you need to identify ways to make your brand stand out from your competitors. The way you'll do this, is to develop a list of things that make your brand different from your competitors, or we call these brand differentiators. A differentiators are seen in the features and benefits of your products or services. Features are defined as top-level statements about your product or service, such as what it does, the particular specifications and so on. Benefits are the statements that show the end result of the product or services features. Here are a few examples of features and benefits. If for instance, your brand features phone support, I know as a customer that I can call you to get help. I love that feature, or maybe I'm an environmentally oriented consumer, I'll love that your item is made of recycled materials. As you're thinking about what makes your brand different from your competitor, take a look at their websites and see what you can learn about their products or services. What are they doing that you plan to do better, or in a way that adds more value to the customer? Will your price be better? Is your product made of maybe unique materials that are better than all of your competitors? Is it recyclable? Is your production process better than all the rest? Do you have free shipping or delivery? Can you do it faster? Is it fresher? Are you open every day of the week? You get where I'm going with this. The features and benefits of your product or services are differentiators that can set your brand apart from your competitors. Creating your UVP or your unique value proposition is similar to your brand promise from lesson 2 both your UVP and your brand promise, focus on the one or two key points of difference between your brand and your competitors. Your brand promise is more about what you as a brand promise to do in every way, all the way down to your lowest level employee. For instance, Patagonia is in the business to save our home planet. That means, everything they do is working towards saving the planet. Your UVP is a clear statement that describes the benefit of your offer, how you solve your customer's needs, and what distinguishes you from the competition. Patagonia's long-lasting outdoor gear from a company that is fighting climate change. No other outdoor gear company can make that claim. Patagonia owns fighting climate change. Your UVP can appear on your homepage of your website and in every advertising and marketing campaign you create. It speaks directly to your customer. Here are three methods for creating your UVP that you can try out. Let's take a closer look. Method 1, go deep, write a headline, a subhead, and three supporting bullets, and think about an image to go with it that supports what you're saying. Method 2, keep it simple. What, how, why? Three key words or phrases, and method 3, we help x to do y by z. Let's look at how I could use method 1 for my brand. I have a headline, clothing and accessories for little dogs and their humans, then I go deeper on the subhead and I get into particulars on the bullets, and I have a photo that supports the copy. Now, let's give method 2 a try. What, how, why? What is clothing and accessories? The how is made in New York City and the why is for little dogs and their humans. Finally method 3, we help x to do y by z, we keep little dogs and their humans warm and adorable all winter long with our clothing and accessories. What did I learn for my brand? Clothing and accessories for little dogs and their humans. Let's review a little. In lesson 3, we learned that your brand promise is the promise you make to your customers, your employees, and the World about how you do what you do. Now, in lesson 4, we learn that your UVP is a statement about what makes your brand unique. Because you are a new brand, please put your UVP on your homepage. Remember, even though you may have been thinking about launching your business for years, no one knows who you are. Make it easy for people to quickly start learning about you in the clearest, most concise way possible. Now, let's learn about taglines. Your tagline is a short and catchy phrase, or a group of words that summarize the overall benefits of your business. The best taglines have their foundation in their brand promise and UVP. You know what your customers need from you and what they expect from you. Your tagline supports that promise. Let's compare the brand promise and taglines of brands we know. For instance, McDonald's, their brand promise, simple, easy enjoyment. Their tagline, I'm loving it. Coca Cola's brand promise to inspire moments of optimism and uplift. Their tagline open happiness. Nike, their brand promise to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the World. The tagline, just do it. Let's look at some examples of local New York brands. Lenwich the sandwich maker, their brand promise, served deliciously crafted sandwiches and salads prepared to the highest standards. Their tagline, the ultimate sandwich. Baguu, they make bags so that you don't have to use disposable bags, specifically, delightful bags that make life easier and more enjoyable. Their tagline, bags for people and the planet. Then Fat Witch Bakery, their brand promise, Fat Witch turns old-fashion recipes into modern day irresistible treats for the gourmet palate. Their tagline, New York City's legendary brownie. Finally, my tagline the brand promise, the promise we design clothes for little dogs that we would where if we were a dog and the tagline for the love of little dogs. Spend 15 minutes online searching your competitors website, google your business category and see what companies come up. Use the worksheet provided to identify the following elements that you may find on your competitors website. Look for the company name that's usually at the top with a logo, the domain name, that will be their URL, their brand promise, maybe an about us, their UVP and their tagline, which may be on the front page as well. See how many brands you can complete in the next 15 minutes. This exercise will help you with the assignment for lesson 4.

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Student Activity: Competitor Website Branding Spend ten minutes online searching your competitors’ websites. Google your business category and see what companies come up. Use the worksheet provided to identify the following elements that you may find on your competitors website. Company Name – Usually on the home page Domain Name – their URL Brand Promise - Look in ABOUT US UVP – Look for copy on their homepage that says what makes them different Tagline – Often under the Company name or logo. See how many brands you can complete in the next fifteen minutes.

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What Makes Your Business Different From Your Competitors? Part 2 Welcome back. How did the activity go? Were you able to identify any of the brand elements that we just learned about? Not every brand does every element and some brands do it better than others? I checked out a few of my competitors and most of them because they've been in business for five to 10 years are not putting their UVP on their homepage. That said I'm sure it shows up in their marketing materials. If someone asks me about Ruffina, my UVP rolls off my tongue, we make clothing and accessories for little dogs and their humans. I'm so glad I took the time to create my UVP, so that I always stay on message. For the assignment in lesson four, you'll be asked to create your brand's UVP and your tagline. I will include the different methods and you can use the one that makes the most sense to you. I hope you have fun with it. See you in less than five.

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Zoom Chat: "Telling Your Story" with Phylicia from Black Monarchy When we think of telling our stories about why we want to start a business, some people are afraid to tell the story. Some people don't know how to tell the story. Some people feel like they don't want to share a pity story. But for me what I noticed, what I realized and what actually finance my business was being honest with other people of what that journey into entrepreneurship looked like. It was not easy and it was not the most sexiest of all stories but telling the story of one and engine that could, someone who believed, someone who was equipped, maybe not with the education for the actual entrepreneurial journey but had to drive with a mission to learn everything that was needed to be successful. I told that story and there were people who believed in what I believed in and they were willing to invest in me. My goal is to forever make that investment the best investment they've ever made and to teach other entrepreneurs that even if you don't have the capital there are people that will believe in your dream to help you get there.

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Zoom Chat: "Choosing a Web Platform"-Continued, with Courtney from Elle James My website is like my baby because I did it all myself. I'm not ready to let go of all the work I've put in yet but I do know eventually I will need to switchover. I guess, not in retrospect, but moving forward my projection is probably within a year to two years, I will definitely be transitioning to a different platform.

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Website Launch Overview Welcome back to launch your online business. By now you've decided what kind of business you're launching. You've created your customer personas, picked your brand name, secured a domain name, developed your brand promise, identity and story. As well as your UVP and tagline. Good work, that was a big job. Now, you're ready to plan your web site launch. In lesson 5, we'll learn about all the elements you need to launch including your domain name, platform, sitemap, design, copywriting, photography, hiring a team or doing it yourself, budget and schedule, banking in e commerce, inventory and shipping. It seems like a lot, but don't worry. I'll break it down for you. As we learned in Lesson One. Every website has a domain name. Your domain name is your web address. You will need to have one when you get started on building your website. We covered best practices for domain names in lesson one. So feel free to loop back to that lesson if you need help. Years ago, when businesses wanted to go online, they hired programmers to build virtual shopping carts and enable online payments. The approach was costly, and often it had a low quality user experience for customers. Play video starting at :1:37 and follow transcript1:37 Today, we have online platforms where businesses can easily and affordably make their own websites. Play video starting at :1:46 and follow transcript1:46 These platforms automate many website features that were daunting years ago, and they allow eCommerce payments. In our next lesson, we'll discuss how to choose a platform. Creating a site map is the best practice when building your site. A site map, designates what is available on your site and where to find it. Think of it as a roadmap that helps you and anyone you have working on your website understand all of the content that's available on the site. Play video starting at :2:18 and follow transcript2:18 You will make a site map for your website in our next lesson. Play video starting at :2:23 and follow transcript2:23 A big element of building your website is design. What it looks like visually will have a big impact on your customer. Customers make all sorts of decisions within the first few seconds of seeing your homepage. Assuming they did a Google search to find you, the first thing they ask themselves is, did this Google link take me to the right place? If your customer doesn't recognize your brand or something about your brand offering right away, they're on to the next link. We've all done it. Your homepage needs to be instantly recognizable as your brand or you may lose customers. We'll cover design in lesson seven. Along with a design style for your website, you'll need to develop a copywriting style. Copy refers to the words your customers read in reference to your business. It includes the language you write to direct customers to your home page in addition to the words on your home page itself. For example, it includes that little blurb that people see on Google when searching for a business like yours. Copy writing is the task of writing all of these words. Websites can include a lot of copy and keeping track of it takes time and effort. In lesson seven, I'll teach you my method for keeping track of copy and you'll also learn about writing styles. Photography makes up a large portion of what your customers will see and interact with when they come to your website. We'll learn about different types of photography, styles of photography and how to set up your photography studio and get photos retouched. By now, you may be feeling overwhelmed with all the work you have to do. It seems impossible but don't worry, it's doable. We'll go over photography in lesson eight. Remember, you don't have to do everything yourself. Part of being a successful business owner is knowing when to bring on help. If you're based in New York City, you have a strong local pool of designers, writers, photographers and videographers to hire from. And hiring online has never been easier regardless of where you are. Or if you already have employees you can see if any of them has one of the skill sets that you're looking for. It pays to ask people maybe there's a budding photographer on your staff. We'll go over hiring and I'll also provide guidance on scheduling these tasks in lesson nine. Also in lesson nine, should you decide to hire help I'll provide you with guidelines on what kinds of expertise you'll need and how much you should expect to pay. If you're considering doing it yourself. You can also use those guidelines to see how much money you would save. In lesson 10, we'll go over some key elements that happened in the background on your website. Things your customers don't exactly see but that impact the success of your site. For instance, to collect payments for sales on your site, you have to set up a bank account for your business and set up your e-commerce on your site. I'll walk you through how to set up a business bank account, your e commerce and your shopping cart. We'll also review considerations for your customers checkout experience. You have to keep track of your inventory to make sure you have products to ship out to customers. I'll show you some inventory tricks. And finally shipping. How to Get your product to your customers. We'll look at shipping from your home or store versus using a fulfillment center. Play video starting at :6:18 and follow transcript6:18 It seems like a lot but you've got this. A great place to start is to research your competitors website. How they set up their website can help you make decisions about what to do with yours. Take 15 minutes to look at your competitors websites. Use the competitive worksheet provided to rate different categories and take notes on things that you liked about their websites and the things that you don't. Why do you like one brand over another? What is it about them? This is research and it's meant to get you more familiar with your competitors. So that you can make your brand the best it can be. If they have a sign up for their newsletter or they're offering special deals or anything like that, just sign up. It'll be helpful to see their email campaigns. And it's also helpful to see how often they send out emails to their mailing list. This activity is going to help you get ready for our next lesson. In lesson six, you're going to choose your platform and create your sitemap. So pay close attention to the way each of your competitors organize their website. It will help you when you're making decisions about your own sitemap.

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Zoom Chat: "Your Website Can Sell More Than Your Products" with Zandra from Zandra Beauty Website, in my opinion is just to showcase really just your business online to people can be able to take a dive into what the brand is all really about. I feel like everything should end. The crazy thing is when we didn't have the speaker inquiries in all that other sections on the website, people would email and ask, we are now we have to do it all, it just came really, it didn't make more sense to put it as a link to have all your information in one place, all of the things that you offer in your brand or whatever should be somewhere located on your website or attached to your email or something like that, so all the things like having a resume, all the things you offer that you can provide to your customers or that's going to interest them should be located on the website because people want to know about the brand and what it offers. If you offer, speaking engagement, books or whatever, it should be located on there so people have all the opportunities to know exactly what you do and what you offer, what you can do to help them out. I think that was a big part of why we decided to do the speaking enquiries because if it didn't come from the website they were going to come through email, and it made it easier because sometimes email when you're getting flooded from, just spam, and regular business, meetings, and emails and then you have customers just about random stuff, and then you have speaking engagement, inquiries and stuff becomes too hard to manage and we don't want to miss opportunities, so in showcases that we're serious about, if you want me to come speak or do anything like that then I'm here we're listening and we're going to make it as professional as possible so it's easier for both people on both sides, it's no confusion and all that good stuff.

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I know it seems like a lot - but you got this! A great place to start is to  research your competitors’ websites. Look at how they set up their websites can help you make decisions about what to do with yours. Take 15 minutes to look at your competitors’ websites. Use the competitor worksheet provided to rate different categories and take notes on things you liked about their websites and the things you don’t.  It’s also worth relooking at sites you like to shop at. Why do you like one brand over another?  Can you figure out what it is that appeals to you?  This is research and it is meant to get you more familiar with your competitors so that you can make your brand the best it can be.  If they have a sign up for their newsletter or special offers – sign up! It will be helpful to see their email campaigns and to see how often they send emails to their mailing list. You can follow them on their social media platforms as well. Remember, you are able to evaluate your competitors’ websites using the provided spreadsheet.

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Decisions to be Made Welcome back to launch your online business. Let's get started planning your website, you have many decisions to make. In lesson 6, I'll cover the things you should consider when you choose an e-commerce platform and I'll show you how to create a sitemap for your website. Let's start with choosing your platform. As I mentioned in the overview for planning your website, there are many platforms to choose from. My top six considerations when deciding on a platform are; monthly cost, transaction fees, e-comm and POS, customer support, design templates, and responsive design. Let's go over each of these and then look at a comparison chart. Each platform charges a monthly fee and some have a free version as well. The free versions are generally limited in features, so if you can afford around 30 a month, I recommend getting the basic version over the free as you'll have more options, such as more templates to choose from. Platforms also charge you a percentage for every transaction, this is how they make their money. Generally, the fee is around three percent. Some platforms do both online e-commerce as well as in-store point of sale or POS software. If you already have a store and are bringing it online, choose a platform that does both e-commerce and can also be your POS. Your POS is the hardware that accepts your customers payment and links it to software that processes the payment. This allows you to capture all of your sales both online and offline with a single platform. Platforms have various levels of customer support where you can reach out with questions by phone, text chat, or e-mail. Some platforms offer all three. POS platforms don't always work perfectly. Maybe you have been shopping in a store where one day they're having issues accepting credit cards or a type of credit card like American Express. I find it very helpful to have phone support when you're in the middle of a tech issue that you can't figure out on your own. Another important feature of platforms is the design templates they provide. They all offer both free templates and templates with a monthly fee. I used a free template for my brand site. As you narrow down your platform choice, spend some time browsing the templates they offer to find one that fits your brand. Look at the layout, the way products are displayed, and how the navigation works. Think about your personas and what they would like. Also, think back on the websites of your competitors and pick a template that will set you apart from their look. Finally, you want a platform that offers responsive design. As this comparison chart shows, most platforms have similar features. The main difference is what they charge in monthly and transaction fees. Do your research, as usually, when things are free, there's a catch. For instance, Big Commerce has no transaction fees, but they automatically bump you up to their next monthly cost when you exceed a certain number of sales. WOO commerce, a plugin that works with WordPress is free, but it's not really for beginners. Unless you have computer programming skills, you'll likely have to hire a programmer to help you build and maintain your site. Most business websites don't need that level of sophistication. In your student activity, I included a link to a website called e-commerce platforms. It does a terrific and detailed job of describing features and benefits of many platforms. Once you read that over, you'll be well on your way to picking your platform. The second link is a helpful comparison chart.

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Decisions to be Made Part 2 Welcome back, I hope you have a good idea of which platform you want to go with. When you're ready to start building your website, you can sign up for a 14 day free trial with most of these platforms. A free trial is helpful. It'll give you a chance to try out the platform before you commit. So let's move on to your site map. To properly plan your website, you need to start with a sitemap. A sitemap is literally a map of all of the content and all of the navigation that your customers will see on your site. The first step is to draft an outline of all the content you think you'll need to have on your site. So let's take a look at a simple outline. This outline has six destinations that customers can navigate. They can shop products, and here I just show three products. You may have many, many more. Customers can read the about section where they find the brand story. The team and they can look at press articles. This brand also has a blog that currently shows three stories. they'll likely add more over the year. And they have actual stores. So they include a store locator and of course, contact. Then in the footer, the navigation at the bottom of the page. They include contact again, which is a best practice, as well as frequently asked questions. They also have their privacy policy and copyright information. You can also repeat all of your main navigation in the footer so that when customers scroll down, they don't have to go all the way back to the top of the page to navigate. Many people like this kind of feature and I find it pretty helpful. This would be what the sitemap would look like for that outline. I built this sitemap in PowerPoint and the template is in the pitch deck for you to use to create your sitemap. Any of these categories can be renamed or deleted if they don't apply to your business. And feel free to add categories. If you need more content areas for your business that I don't show. Once you have your sitemap created, you can share it with everyone who's helping you build your site so that you're all working from the same roadmap. Let's look at a few other examples of sitemaps. This one is very simple and seems to be for a nonprofit. It has an about section, a program section, a section for members and a page to donate as well as a contact page. This site map reflects a business that has both products and projects that they want their customers to know about. Their projects are showing their customers those products that they have already installed. They also have a whole support section and an about section and of course contact us. And they also plan to let customers switch countries you can see up here and they show their footer as a repeat of the main navigation. And I wanted to share a method for sorting out your categories. You can rough it out with post-it notes. I liked the thinking behind using post-its to help figure out what the categories are and where they should go. It's easy to do, and it can be just as effective as doing it on your computer. It's good for those of us who are more hands-on and less computer oriented. Play video starting at :3:36 and follow transcript3:36 Here are some tips for creating your sitemap. Put your customer first, think about what they need the most and put it first on the main menu. I have shopped first on mine websites main menu as I think that's why people come to my site. They come to shop. From there, they can learn more about my company, they can read my blog, and so on. Keep your menu short. As a rule of thumb, try your hardest to keep the main menu to five to seven choices. More than seven is just too many things for your customers to digest. Make it easy for your customers to get around your site, or they may jump to someone who makes it easier. Play video starting at :4:19 and follow transcript4:19 Another reason to limit the number of your choices on your homepage is that Google does not like sites that have a ton of links on the homepage. Each menu choice equals a link. So Google and other search engines a few sites with lots of links as potential spam sites, and they give them a low rate ranking, and you don't want that. Use understandable names. Use very simple terms for your menu choices. Try not to get too creative or cutesy. You may know what the word you've chosen means but your customer may not be descriptive and short as possible limit drop down menus. This is often hard to do because we all have a lot of content where you can avoid drop downs, please try to do so. Customers want to see what you have and they won't necessarily want to click on every menu choice to find what they're looking for. If you can have your products or your services on your main navigation, try to do that. Also avoid format based navigation, navigation choices such as video photos and white papers. Tell your customer what format your content is in. But think about it from the customer's perspective. Do they really care about that? Now, they want to know where to find what they're looking for. The format doesn't make a difference to them. If your template allows include a search function, again, make it easy for your customers to find what they're looking for. The footer helps you simplify your main navigation. It includes content that the vast majority of your customers won't read. Like your frequently asked questions your privacy policy, or your return and shipping rules. Most customers are on your site simply to shop. Think of it as a place to put all of your back of the store choices. It's also a good idea to completely repeat the main menu in the footer, so that customers who have scrolled all the way down to the bottom don't have to go all the way back to the top to navigate. And include your phone number. Don't you hate it when you're on a website and you just need to talk to a human and you can't find the number. If you can support it, meaning answer the phone, put your phone number on your homepage. If your customer needs to talk to you, they will love you for it. Again, put the customer first. Don't make them do the work to find your number. In the world of website building, the ink is never dry. You can always change things. Your aim is to launch with the best navigation that you can design. Over time, you'll be able to look at your web analytics and learn about what customers are actually doing. And you can reorder your navigation to reflect their actions. If you notice that they're not clicking on things that you thought were important. We'll cover web analytics in lesson 12. For your assignment, you'll be picking your platform and creating the sitemap for your website. Remember, you can change your sitemap and the web navigation later. If you learn your original thinking wasn't quite right. So for the assignment, pick your platform based on the research you did in the student activity. Create your sitemap using the sitemap slide in your Pitch Deck. Good luck with it. And we'll see you for Lesson 7.

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Zoom Chat: "Choosing a Web Platform" with Courtney from Elle James A lot of people say, Squarespace or Shopify are a lot easier to work with. So even right now I'm doing some work with a web designer just to kind of update my website and make it a little bit more clean. And, she doesn't really work on WIX, she really only works on Squarespace. And so she would love for me to transfer to that, but I'm not ready for that yet. And so, I'm doing a lot of the detail updates myself which I'm okay with, and it's actually more affordable to just do it myself. But I guess a piece of advice would be maybe start out on Squarespace if you eventually want to have some website designer help.

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Design & Copy Welcome back to launch your online business. Congrats on choosing your platform and creating your sitemap, your online business is really starting to take shape. In lesson seven, we're going to work on the design and copy for your website, let's start with design. Each e-commerce platform offers different themes to display your products or services. A theme is a layout that determines how your online store looks and feels. Different themes have different styles and layouts and each offers a different experience for your customer. Let's take a look at a few theme examples of product sites. Most platforms have both free themes and themes you pay for, the cost of the theme is charged to you on top of the monthly fee to use the platform. Most themes are responsive meaning they lay out your content and the best way for customers to access whether they're using a desktop, mobile phone or tablet, what they all allow you to do is set up your navigation and collect payments. You can see that products, images and text are laid out differently from theme to theme. That's what you're deciding on, what layout works best for your brand. Here are some examples of templates that work for service business, again, all the themes let you set up navigation and have an order now button or get a quote. As you design your site, you'll have the option to see what it looks like on all three desktop mobile and tablet. I think when you're designing, mobile is the most important consideration because these days, everyone shops and researches on their phones. So make sure you look great on mobile. While you're starting out, I recommend you pick a free theme, you can always change to a paid theme later if you want to. Wherever one you choose, there are still many design decisions to be made. You'll pick the colors for your call to action buttons or CTAs, those are the prompts for customers to take action like shop or checkout. Templates let you choose your type autography, these are the fonts that your copy will be displayed in. And deciding on where type in images are placed on each page, these are all design decisions and add up to the total look and feel of your site. For your student activity browse your platforms themes and see which one feels right for your brand. Most platforms will guide you as to what themes work best for your type of business, whether it be a product, business or a service business.

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Take 10 minutes and browse your platform’s themes and see which one feels right for your brand. Usually your platform will guide you as to what themes work best for your type of business such as product versus service business.

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Design & Copy Part 2 Welcome back. I hope you found a great theme for your brand. Another contributor to how a site looks and feels is copy. Copy is all of the written words on your site. What you say and how many words it takes you to say it in will have an impact on your customer. Always put the customer first and write as clearly as possible. We've all visited sites with an overwhelming amount of copy. It's a turnoff, too long, didn't read. Here are some of my best practices. Keep it short. If it's a product description, then you should write no more than a paragraph. If it's your UVP, then write no more than a sentence. Use common spelling. You're not writing a tweet, spell things correctly. Avoid fancy words. Keep it simple. Revise and rewrite. Albert Einstein said, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." A website ends up having a lot of copy. A lot of business owners like yourself asked me, how do I keep track of all the copy I need to write? You will be creating a copy deck for that very purpose. Whether you're building your website yourself or hiring someone to do it, you'll need a copy deck to sign off on the final copy and to be used to track future changes. Think of your copy deck as a home for all of your copy. If you're building your website yourself, you might decide to skip this step. Why bother doing all that work when you could just go to your platform, open your theme, and start typing? The main reason you want to have a copy deck is to keep track of the copy you have used over time. If you need to ask an employee for help or hire a freelancer because you got busy and you can't do it yourself, you'll have this nice document to hand over to the team. It's also a great way to see all of the copy written in one place, rather than having to navigate through your whole site to see each piece of copy. Let's walk through a section of my copy deck and then we can look at the template I created for you to use to create your copy deck. On the left-hand side of the copy deck, I have a running list of all the items on my site map. Here we're seeing the items on the homepage starting with my product description. This one about Polartec, this one about color. Then, each of my columns has my first draft, my second draft, and my third draft, and then Lindsay, my intern's draft. Here is the copy deck I created for you to use as a home for your copy. Feel free to rename it or open it in Google Docs if you prefer to work there. I like the idea of using Google Docs as it's an easy way to share your work with the team. For the student activity, get started on filling out your copy deck. Structure the copy deck provided so that it mirrors your sitemap structure. Make sure the column headers align with your sitemap structure. Spend some time roughing out the copy for your website. It doesn't have to be perfect, just get started.

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Let's start filling out your Copy Deck. Structure it so that it mirrors your site map structure. Make sure the column headers align with your site map structure.

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Design & Copy Part 3: Assignment Instructions Welcome back. I bet you've spent a lot of time on that copydeck so far, but don't worry, you can finish it up in the assignment. Finish the copydeck to the best of your ability. You'll use it when you start building your site. You'll have a window on your desktop open with your platforms theme, and another window open with the copydeck. You'll copy and paste your copy into the theme. Once you add the copy to your theme, if you don't like how it looks like maybe it's too long, you can create the changes right there and then. Once you're happy with what you've written, copy the final copy that you've put on your website back into the copydeck into column two. You will find there are some sections that you rewrite many times while others just work great the first time. You'll be able to look back at past copy to reflect on your changes. It could be that you go back to the way you wrote it the very first time. Customer feedback and friend feedback will help you know what to change as you go along. If no one's clicking on the content, maybe it's time to rewrite it. Writing great copy is a skill that you can improve with practice. Short, concise, and descriptive copywriting always wins out over long, confusing, and meandering copy. Be as direct and as clear as you can be. Your customers will thank you for it. See you for lesson eight. I will be teaching you about photography, one of my favorite subjects.

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