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The Top 7 Business Plan Examples To Inspire Your Own (2023)
- by Alexandra Sheehan
- Starting Up
- Aug 13, 2021
- 8 minute read
Any aspiring entrepreneur researching how to start a business will likely be advised to write a business plan . But few resources provide business plan templates and relatable examples to really help guide you through writing one of your own.
That’s why we took some real-world and hypothetical examples of product-based ecommerce businesses to show how you can write your business plan.
7 Business plan examples: section by section
The business plan examples we’ll look at below follow this example template:
- Executive summary. An introductory overview of your business.
- Company description. A more in-depth and detailed description of your business and why it exists.
- Market analysis. Research-based information about the industry and your target market.
- Products and services. What you plan to offer in exchange for money.
- Marketing plan. The promotional strategy to introduce your business to the world and drive sales.
- Logistics and operations plan. Everything that happens in the background to make your business function properly.
- Financial plan. A breakdown of your numbers to show what you need to get started as well as to prove viability of profitability.
Below, we have some real-world and hypothetical examples of each of these sections to show you how a business plan comes together.
- Executive summary
Your executive summary is a page that gives a high-level overview of the rest of your business plan. It’s easiest to save this section for last.
In our business plan template for Paw Print Post , the executive summary is four paragraphs and takes a little over half a page:
- Company description
You might repurpose your company description elsewhere, like on your about page, social media profile pages, or other properties that require a boilerplate description of your business.
Soap brand ORRIS has a blurb on its About page that could easily be repurposed for the company description section of its business plan.
You can also go more in-depth with your company overview and include the following sections, like we did for Paw Print Post:
- Business structure. This section outlines how you registered your business —as an LLC , sole proprietorship, corporation, or other business type . “Paw Print Post will operate as a sole proprietorship run by the owner, Jane Matthews.”
- Nature of the business. “Paw Print Post sells unique, one-of-a-kind digitally printed cards that are customized with a pet’s unique paw prints.”
- Industry. “Paw Print Post operates primarily in the pet industry and sells goods that could also be categorized as part of the greeting card industry.”
- Background information. “Jane Matthews, the founder of Paw Print Post, has a long history in the pet industry and working with animals, and was recently trained as a graphic designer. She’s combining those two loves to capture a niche in the market: unique greeting cards customized with a pet’s paw prints, without needing to resort to the traditional (and messy) options of casting your pet’s prints in plaster or using pet-safe ink to have them stamp their ‘signature.’”
- Business objectives. “Jane will have Paw Print Post ready to launch at the Big Important Pet Expo in Toronto to get the word out among industry players and consumers alike. After two years in business, Jane aims to drive $150,000 in annual revenue from the sale of Paw Print Post’s signature greeting cards and have expanded into two new product categories.”
- Team. “Jane Matthews is the sole full-time employee of Paw Print Post but hires contractors as needed to support her workflow and fill gaps in her skill set. Notably, Paw Print Post has a standing contract for five hours a week of virtual assistant support with Virtual Assistants Pro.”
Your mission statement may also make an appearance here. Passionfruit shares its mission statement on its company website, and it would also work well in its business plan example.
- Market analysis
The market analysis consists of research about supply and demand, your target market, industry trends, and the competitive landscape. You might run a SWOT analysis and include that in your business plan. Here’s an example SWOT analysis we did for an online tailored-shirt business:
You’ll also want to do a competitive analysis as part of the market research component of your business plan. This will tell you who you’re up against and give you ideas on how to differentiate your brand. Your competitive analysis might look like this:
- Products and services
This section of your business plan describes your offerings—which products and services do you sell to your customers? Here’s what we wrote for Paw Print Post:
- Marketing plan
It’s always a good idea to develop a marketing plan before you launch your business. Your marketing plan shows how you’ll get the word out about your business, and it’s an essential component of your business plan as well.
For Paw Print Post, we focused on four Ps: price, product, promotion, and place. However, you can take a different approach with your marketing plan. Maybe you can pull from your existing marketing strategy , or maybe you break it down by the different marketing channels. Whatever approach you take, your marketing plan should describe how you intend to promote your business and offerings to potential customers. It’s OK to go high level here.
- Logistics and operations plan
- For Paw Print Post, we looked at suppliers, production, facilities, equipment, shipping and fulfillment, and inventory.
Financial plan
The financial plan provides a breakdown of sales, revenue, profit, expenses, and other relevant financial metrics related to funding and profiting from your business.
Ecommerce brand Nature’s Candy’s financial plan breaks down predicted revenue, expenses, and net profit in graphs.
It then dives deeper into the financials to include:
- Funding needs
- Projected profit-and-loss statement
- Projected balance sheet
- Projected cash-flow statement
You can use this financial plan template to build your own income statement, balance sheet, and cash-flow statement.
Types of business plans + what to include for each
A one-page business plan is meant to be high level and easy to understand at a glance. You’ll want to include all of the sections, but make sure they’re truncated and summarized:
- Executive summary: truncated
- Market analysis: summarized
- Products and services: summarized
- Marketing plan: summarized
- Logistics and operations plan: summarized
- Financials: summarized
A startup business plan is for a new business. Typically, these plans are developed and shared to secure outside funding . As such, there’s a bigger focus on the financials as well as on other sections that determine viability of your business idea—market research, for example.
- Market analysis: in-depth
- Financials: in-depth
Your internal business plan is meant to keep your team on the same page and aligned toward the same goal.
A strategic, or growth, business plan is a bigger picture, more-long-term look at your business. As such, the forecasts tend to look further into the future, and growth and revenue goals may be higher. Essentially, you want to use all the sections you would in a normal business plan and build upon each.
- Market analysis: comprehensive outlook
- Products and services: for launch and expansion
- Marketing plan: comprehensive outlook
- Logistics and operations plan: comprehensive outlook
- Financials: comprehensive outlook
Feasibility
Your feasibility business plan is sort of a pre-business plan—many refer to it as simply a feasibility study. This plan essentially lays the groundwork and validates that it’s worth the effort to make a full business plan for your idea. As such, it’s mostly centered around research.
More resources for validating your ideas:
- Product Research: The 15-Step Checklist for Finding Profitable, In-Demand Product Ideas
- Video: How to Validate Your Product Ideas
Set yourself up for success
Building a business plan serves as a roadmap you can use for your ecommerce business at launch and as you reach each of your growth goals. Business plans create accountability for entrepreneurs and synergy among teams, regardless of your business model .
Kickstart your ecommerce business and set yourself up for success with intentional business planning—and with the business plan examples above to guide your own path.
Ready to create your first business? Start your free trial of Shopify—no credit card required.
Business plan faq, what 5 things should a business plan include.
- Executive Summary: A concise overview of the company's mission, goals, target audience, and financial objectives.
- Business Description: A description of the company's purpose, operations, products and services, target markets, and competitive landscape.
- Market Analysis: An analysis of the industry, market trends, potential customers, and competitors.
- Financial Plan: A detailed description of the company's financial projections and strategies.
- Implementation Plan: An outline of the steps, resources, and timeline required to bring the business plan to fruition.
What are the 3 C's of a business plan?
- Concept – your concept should explain the purpose of your business and provide an overall summary of what you intend to accomplish.
- Contents – your content should include details about the products and services you provide, your target market, and your competition.
- Cashflow – your cashflow section should include information about your expected cash inflows and outflows, such as capital investments, operating costs, and revenue projections.
What are 5 common mistakes of a business plan?
- Poor financial projections: Business plans should provide realistic financial projections based on market research and sound assumptions.
- Lack of competitive analysis: Business plans should contain a competitive analysis that outlines the competitive landscape, identifies key competitors, and assesses the competitive advantages and disadvantages of the proposed business.
- Inconsistent formatting: Business plans should be presented in a professional, consistent format that is easy to read and understand.
- Insufficient research: Business plans should be thoroughly researched and include accurate and up-to-date information.
- Unrealistic goals: Business plans should set realistic and achievable goals that are in line with the proposed business’s resources and financial abilities.
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Website Design Business Plan Template
Written by Dave Lavinsky
Over the past 20+ years, we have helped over 1,000 entrepreneurs and business owners create business plans to start and grow their website design businesses. On this page, we will first give you some background information with regards to the importance of business planning. We will then go through a website design business plan template step-by-step so you can create your plan today.
Download our Ultimate Business Plan Template here >
What Is a Business Plan?
A business plan provides a snapshot of your website design business as it stands today, and lays out your growth plan for the next five years. It explains your business goals and your strategy for reaching them. It also includes market research to support your plans.
Why You Need a Business Plan
If you’re looking to start a website design business, or grow your existing website design business, you need a business plan. A business plan will help you raise funding, if needed, and plan out the growth of your website design business in order to improve your chances of success. Your website design business plan is a living document that should be updated annually as your company grows and changes.
Sources of Funding for Website Design Businesses
With regards to funding, the main sources of funding for a website design business are personal savings, credit cards, bank loans and angel investors. With regards to bank loans, banks will want to review your business plan and gain confidence that you will be able to repay your loan and interest. To acquire this confidence, the lender will not only want to confirm that your financials are reasonable, but they will also want to see a professional plan. Such a plan will give them the confidence that you can successfully and professionally operate a business.
Personal savings is the most common form of funding for a website design business. Venture capitalists will usually not fund a website design business. They might consider funding a website design business with a national presence, but never an individual location. This is because most venture capitalists are looking for millions of dollars in return when they make an investment, and an individual location could never achieve such results. With that said, personal savings and bank loans are the most common funding paths for website design businesses.
If you want to start a website design business or expand your current one, you need a business plan. Below are links to each section of your website design business plan template:
Executive Summary
Your executive summary provides an introduction to your business plan, but it is normally the last section you write because it provides a summary of each key section of your plan.
The goal of your Executive Summary is to quickly engage the reader. Explain to them the type of website design business you are operating and its status. For example, are you a startup, do you have a website design business that you would like to grow, or are you operating website design businesses in multiple markets?
Next, provide an overview of each of the subsequent sections of your plan. For example, give a brief overview of the website design industry. Discuss the type of website design business you are operating. Detail your direct competitors. Give an overview of your target customers. Provide a snapshot of your marketing plan. Identify the key members of your team. And offer an overview of your financial plan.
Company Analysis
In your company analysis, you will detail the type of website design business you are operating.
For example, you might operate one of the following types of website design businesses:
- WordPress website design : this type of business builds websites with WordPress, due to its capabilities, plugin options, and templates.
- Custom website design: this type of business involves developing both the front end and backend of a website using coding, programming, databases, forms, etc. without a content management platform.
- Other platform website design: this type of business uses a variety of other platforms to develop specific types of site, such as e-commerce. Platforms like Shopify or Squarespace make specific site development relatively easy.
In addition to explaining the type of website design business you will operate, the Company Analysis section of your business plan needs to provide background on the business.
Include answers to question such as:
- When and why did you start the business?
- What milestones have you achieved to date? Milestones could include the number of websites launched, the types of sites developed, etc.
- Your legal structure. Are you incorporated as an S-Corp? An LLC? A sole proprietorship? Explain your legal structure here.
Industry Analysis
In your industry analysis, you need to provide an overview of the website design industry.
While this may seem unnecessary, it serves multiple purposes.
First, researching the website design industry educates you. It helps you understand the market in which you are operating.
Secondly, market research can improve your strategy, particularly if your research identifies market trends.
The third reason for market research is to prove to readers that you are an expert in your industry. By conducting the research and presenting it in your plan, you achieve just that.
The following questions should be answered in the industry analysis section of your website design business plan:
- How big is the website design industry (in dollars)?
- Is the market declining or increasing?
- Who are the key competitors in the market?
- Who are the key suppliers in the market?
- What trends are affecting the industry?
- What is the industry’s growth forecast over the next 5 – 10 years?
- What is the relevant market size? That is, how big is the potential market for your website design business? You can extrapolate such a figure by assessing the size of the market in the entire country and then applying that figure to your local population.
Customer Analysis
The customer analysis section of your website design business plan must detail the customers you serve and/or expect to serve.
The following are examples of customer segments: large corporations, small businesses, nonprofits, government entities, and individuals.
As you can imagine, the customer segment(s) you choose will have a great impact on the type of website design business you operate. Clearly, large corporations would respond to different marketing promotions than nonprofits, for example.
Try to break out your target customers in terms of their demographic and psychographic profiles. With regards to demographics, include a discussion of the ages, genders, locations and income levels of the customers you seek to serve. Because most website design businesses primarily serve customers living in their same city or town, such demographic information is easy to find on government websites.
Psychographic profiles explain the wants and needs of your target customers. The more you can understand and define these needs, the better you will do in attracting and retaining your customers.
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Competitive Analysis
Your competitive analysis should identify the indirect and direct competitors your business faces and then focus on the latter.
Direct competitors are other website design businesses.
Indirect competitors are other options that customers have to purchase from that aren’t direct competitors. This includes individuals who prefer to use template-based platforms to build their website on their own, or from dedicated in-house design teams.
With regards to direct competition, you want to describe the other website design businesses with which you compete. Most likely, your direct competitors will be website design businesses located very close to your location.
For each such competitor, provide an overview of their businesses and document their strengths and weaknesses. Unless you once worked at your competitors’ businesses, it will be impossible to know everything about them. But you should be able to find out key things about them such as:
- What types of customers do they serve?
- Do they specialize in specific site types (i.e. content sites, e-commerce sites, etc.)?
- What is their pricing (premium, low, etc.)?
- What are they good at?
- What are their weaknesses?
With regards to the last two questions, think about your answers from the customers’ perspective. And don’t be afraid to ask your competitors’ customers what they like most and least about them.
The final part of your competitive analysis section is to document your areas of competitive advantage. For example:
- Will you provide either a wider range or more specialized range of services?
- Will you offer features such as social media integration?
- Will you provide superior customer service?
- Will you offer better pricing?
Think about ways you will outperform your competition and document them in this section of your plan.
Marketing Plan
Traditionally, a marketing plan includes the four P’s: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. For a website design business plan, your marketing plan should include the following:
Product : In the product section, you should reiterate the type of website design company that you documented in your Company Analysis. Then, detail the specific products you will be offering. For example, in addition to WordPress site development, will your website design business provide custom design options?
Price : Document the prices you will offer and how they compare to your competitors. Essentially in the product and price sub-sections of your marketing plan, you are presenting the services you offer and their prices.
Place : Place refers to the location of your website design company. Document your location and mention how the location will impact your success. For example, will you operate from a physical office, or will you primarily interact with clients online and/or at their home or place of business? In this section, discuss how your location will affect demand for your services.
Promotions : The final part of your website design marketing plan is the promotions section. Here you will document how you will drive customers to your location(s). The following are some promotional methods you might consider:
- Advertising in local papers and magazines
- Reaching out to local websites
- Signs and billboards
- Social media marketing
- Local radio advertising
Operations Plan
While the earlier sections of your business plan explained your goals, your operations plan describes how you will meet them. Your operations plan should have two distinct sections as follows.
Everyday short-term processes include all of the tasks involved in running your website design business, including marketing, providing consultations, programming, troubleshooting, keeping abreast of new technology, etc.
Long-term goals are the milestones you hope to achieve. These could include the dates when you expect to launch your 100th e-commerce site, or when you hope to reach $X in revenue. It could also be when you expect to open a website design business in a new location.
Management Team
To demonstrate your website design business’ ability to succeed, a strong management team is essential. Highlight your key players’ backgrounds, emphasizing those skills and experiences that prove their ability to grow a company.
Ideally you and/or your team members have direct experience in managing website design businesses. If so, highlight this experience and expertise. But also highlight any experience that you think will help your business succeed.
If your team is lacking, consider assembling an advisory board. An advisory board would include 2 to 8 individuals who would act like mentors to your business. They would help answer questions and provide strategic guidance. If needed, look for advisory board members with experience in programming, or successfully running small businesses.
Financial Plan
Your financial plan should include your 5-year financial statement broken out both monthly or quarterly for the first year and then annually. Your financial statements include your income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statements.
Income Statement : an income statement is more commonly called a Profit and Loss statement or P&L. It shows your revenues and then subtracts your costs to show whether you turned a profit or not.
In developing your income statement, you need to devise assumptions. For example, will you complete/launch one website per week, or will you have teams working on multiple projects at once? And will sales grow by 2% or 10% per year? As you can imagine, your choice of assumptions will greatly impact the financial forecasts for your business. As much as possible, conduct research to try to root your assumptions in reality.
Balance Sheets : Balance sheets show your assets and liabilities. While balance sheets can include much information, try to simplify them to the key items you need to know about. For instance, if you spend $50,000 on building out your website design business, this will not give you immediate profits. Rather it is an asset that will hopefully help you generate profits for years to come. Likewise, if a bank writes you a check for $50,000, you don’t need to pay it back immediately. Rather, that is a liability you will pay back over time.
Cash Flow Statement : Your cash flow statement will help determine how much money you need to start or grow your business, and make sure you never run out of money. What most entrepreneurs and business owners don’t realize is that you can turn a profit but run out of money and go bankrupt.
In developing your Income Statement and Balance Sheets be sure to include several of the key costs needed in starting or growing a website design business:
- Office build-out
- Cost of buying or leasing a company vehicle
- Cost of office supplies such as computers and software
- Payroll or salaries paid to staff
- Business insurance
- Taxes and permits
- Legal expenses
Attach your full financial projections in the appendix of your plan along with any supporting documents that make your plan more compelling. For example, you might include your office lease, or an overview of the services you offer.
Putting together a business plan for your website design business is a worthwhile endeavor. If you follow the template above, by the time you are done, you will truly be an expert. You will really understand the website design industry, your competition, and your customers. You will have developed a marketing plan and will really understand what it takes to launch and grow a successful website design business.
Web Design Business Plan FAQs
What is the easiest way to complete my website design business plan.
Growthink's Ultimate Business Plan Template allows you to quickly and easily complete your Website Design Business Plan.
What is the Goal of a Business Plan's Executive Summary?
The goal of your Executive Summary is to quickly engage the reader. Explain to them the type of website design business you are operating and the status; for example, are you a startup, do you have a website design business that you would like to grow, or are you operating a chain of website design businesses?
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Other Helpful Business Plan Articles & Templates
- Hubspot Blog
- HubSpot.com
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How to Write an Ecommerce Business Plan [Examples & Template]
Published: July 07, 2022
If you have a promising idea for an online ecommerce business , it’s important to create an ecommerce business plan to ensure your vision has enough stock to be profitable.
Having a business plan for your online store will help you define your target market, establish your monthly and quarterly sales goals, and increase the likelihood of long-term ecommerce success.
In this post, we’ll go over what an online store business plan is and how you can create one for your ecommerce startup. Let’s get started.
What is an ecommerce business plan?
An ecommerce business plan is a document that outlines your business and its goals, analyzes your industry and competitors, and identifies the resources needed to execute your plan. It also lists the ecommerce retailers you’ll use to distribute your products and the marketing strategies you’ll use to drive sales.
Whether a company operates as a startup or has years of operations and growth under its belt, an ecommerce business plan is essential for evaluating a business and determining areas of improvement.
An ecommerce business plan is especially important, with an increasing number of shoppers conducting business online. It's estimated this number has reached over 2 billion . Having an ecommerce business plan keeps you organized and is useful when seeking investors who need to understand your company.
So, let’s dive into some examples of ecommerce business plans and what goes into writing one using our free template .
Ecommerce Business Plan Template
Download Your Free Template Here
HubSpot's template provides clear steps to structuring one for your ecommerce business. Throughout this section, I’ll use the example of a photography company specializing in online photo editing.
How to Write an E-commerce Business Plan
- Give an executive summary.
- List and describe your business.
- Detail your products and services.
- Conduct a market analysis.
- Strategize your marketing plan.
- Create a sales plan.
- Outline legal notes and financial considerations.
1. Give an executive summary.
An executive summary is a one-to-two page overview of your business. The purpose of an executive summary is to let stakeholders know what the business plan will contain. HubSpot's free template offers some tips on how to write one, as I've done below:
It's important to provide an executive summary so that an investor or executive, who doesn’t have the time to read your full plan, can quickly see the most important highlights of your business.
2. List and describe your business.
This is the section that needs the most detail because it highlights what you're selling. To begin, provide an overview of your product or service. For instance, a photography company would probably list their photo packages arranged by price and services, as I did below:
HubSpot's template also provides direction on how to describe your company's purpose and break down values. It also advises businesses to include team structure, if applicable. Below that, you should go into detail about your product and service lines.
3. Detail your products and services.
Once you have described your business and its purpose, you’re ready to dive deeper into your plan. What products and services do you or will you offer? This is an opportunity to list each item and its purpose, allowing you to answer the question ‘ why?’ Why are you choosing to offer these specific products and services?
After detailing your products and services, outline your pricing model. What is the cost associated with each service? Determining price, especially as a startup, can be challenging. However, sales pricing calculators help determine the best pricing strategy.
Download This Template
4. Conduct a market analysis.
For the market analysis, provide the operational climate of the industry you're in. To illustrate, at this step, the photography company would need to analyze its position in a world of rival companies like Adobe or online services like Canva. Below, I've done a quick competitor analysis, available in the template:
Using directions in the template as a guide, I was able to come up with more selling points of the company and how it stands out from competitors.
Filling out the market analysis section of the business plan assists with providing the framework for future campaigns. You’re able to define your target market and ideal customer. Refer to my example below for how to structure this analysis in your ecommerce plan.
Good market analysis includes your target audience, projections of your company's goals, and a breakdown of the competition's goals and weaknesses. This is a counterpoint of how your business improves upon those weaknesses.
For a complete guide on how to create a market analysis, we have one here.
5. Strategize your marketing plan.
For any business, having the right marketing plan for your eCommerce business is crucial. It serves as a roadmap for how your company will build brand awareness, reach your target audience, and boost sales and revenue. As seen in this template, your marketing plan will focus on positioning strategy, acquisition channels, and tools and technology.
Positioning strategy fixates on how you will position yourself to your audience. How will you address their challenges and goals? How will you use the tools at your disposal to accomplish this?
The marketing plan will also require you to focus on where your customers come from. Are they finding your business through search engine marketing? Do they discover your business from your blog or social media accounts? Identifying your acquisition channels allows you to identify which ones to prioritize.
Lastly, your marketing plan should lay out the tools and technology your marketing team will need and use. Will you use a content management system (CMS) like CMS Hub ? List all the software and programs your company will use to execute its marketing plan.
6. Create a sales plan.
When creating your sales plan, describe your methodology, organization structure, sales channels, and tools and technology. For example, when discussing methodology, will you focus on an inbound strategy where you attract customers to your business through your content or an outbound strategy where you initiate contact with your prospects? This part of your ecommerce business plan will also require you to outline the people in charge of selling your products and services, as well as what channels they’ll use to sell your products.
Similar to creating your marketing plan, the sales plan will also require a brief on what tools you plan to use. While your marketing plan might need a CMS, your sales plan might need a customer retention management (CRM) software like HubSpot to manage your relationships with current and potential customers.
7. Outline legal notes and financial considerations.
In the following two sections of your business plan, describe the legal and financial structures. The photography company should provide detail on the legal considerations like online safety rules, ecommerce regulations, and the company's costs.
Listing legality and every cost needed to start ecommerce is crucial information for investors and stakeholders. In this section, it's important to be honest and thorough to give partners a realistic idea of how to contribute.
Ecommerce Business Plan Examples
1. maple ecommerce plan.
This sample plan, provided on LinkedIn, is for a fictional company called Maple, an online store that sells exclusive Apple products. Maple's sample plan is great because it provides easy-to-follow charts and graphics while highlighting the most important information. For example, their market analysis included a SWOT plan for the business.
Image Source
Outlining the strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities of Maple in this format is easy for potential investors to follow. Notating each value with a letter keeps the format consistent, which is carried throughout the plan. For businesses that find their information is best presented in graphics, Maple is a good plan to follow.
2. Nature's Candy Ecommerce Plan
Nature's Candy is an online retailer that provides nutritional supplements. Its business plan is available online and is helpful in seeing how businesses go from planning to execution. Below is a preview of its plan in the financial forecasting section.
This example shows who will be on payroll yearly, giving investors an idea of how their investment will work in the long term. Planning ahead also shows stakeholders’ dedication to starting up your business.
3. NoHassleReturn Ecommerce Plan
Fictional company NoHassleReturn's sample ecommerce plan is an expansive, detailed version of how ecommerce would translate to a completely online store. The company itself is structured to offer a way to make returning items bought from an online store a simple process, and the steps to take are featured below.
Having a sequence of processes like this is useful if your company is a niche idea. Investors and stakeholders need to know how your business will be new and unique for the market.
Even though writing out a business plan seems like a painstaking process, we have a step-by-step guide to help. This will keep you organized and keep you on track when structuring your business.
4. OGS Capital Ecommerce Plan
This sample ecommerce business plan comes from OGS Capital, where they created a test business plan for Botswana’s first private psychiatric hospital focused on inpatient and outpatient clinical health care. It features detailed sections for the business model, marketing plan, financial projects, and more. This level of detail is demonstrated below in their executive summary section.
While some ecommerce business plans will explain the executive summary through a series of paragraphs, the layout in this sample makes the information more digestible. The project is separated into sections that detail the business idea, as well as its goals and strengths. The business idea includes price projects, geographical focus, and target customers. Goals for this project are created for 10 years with specific, individual goals built at one-, five-, and seven-year time markers. Lastly, this executive summary highlights the strengths of this business plan to solidify this project and its importance.
5. Egrocery Ecommerce Plan
For centuries, people have left their homes to buy groceries from stores, supermarkets, farmer’s markets, and more. At-home grocery delivery has grown in popularity and is reflected in this sample ecommerce plan for a fictional business named eGrocery. This sample plan establishes the company as an online grocery retail business with plans for connecting customers to distributors for fast, convenient at-home deliveries.
In its business model section, eGrocery outlines how it will implement both a business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) model to get products from distributors, retailers, and wholesalers to its household customers. This section provides an effective demonstration of the company’s overall function.
6. Shannon & Shavonne Inc. Ecommerce Plan
Shannon & Shavonne Inc. is a fictional United States-based online retailer that offers its customers an abundance of products in fashion, home appliances, electronics, and more. The depth seen in this plan is particularly helpful, especially with the detail seen in outlining the business structure and each job’s roles and responsibilities.
The plan first lists all the necessary roles, from the chief executive officer (CEO) to a call center agent. It then describes the responsibilities of each role. As displayed in the image above, an information technologist (IT) would be tasked with managing the organization’s website, updating the online store, and ensuring the security of the company’s payment platform. The clear distinction of roles helps manage employee expectations and accountability.
7. Firstcry.com Ecommerce Plan
In this sample, we have Firstcry.com — a fictional ecommerce site that creates eco-friendly baby and feminine hygiene products. Because the company is looking for funding to launch the business, its plan focuses on its financial highlights and projections, which is crucial information for investors.
While disclosing what the startup funds will be used for, this plan also estimates its top-line projections over the next five years. As seen in the chart above, they include revenue, expenses, interest, and net income. The plan even breaks down how many customers per day and annual orders will be needed to reach this goal.
When it comes to building an ecommerce business plan, you’ll likely find that the more detail you include, the better.
Planning is the first step.
When starting a business, planning is always a crucial first step. If you find that you’ve launched a company without a concrete plan, it’s never too late. Successful businesses require strategy, and that’s what an ecommerce business plan gives you. It allows you to strategize what your business does, how it operates, and why it's essential. Not only does it help you pinpoint who the key players of your company are, but it helps you identify who your target audience should be.
With the steps listed in this article and the examples to take inspiration from, you’re one step closer to building an ecommerce business plan for success.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in November 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
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The 7 Best Business Plan Examples
So you want to start a business . Kudos! You’re doing big things.
One of the first steps to building a strong foundation for your new venture is to write a rock-solid business plan . When done right, your business plan can pave your path to success, all while helping you to smoothly cruise through any obstacles that may come up.
Plus, a good business plan can help you secure critical partnerships and funding that you might need in your early stages.
If you’re unsure how to write one, a great place to start is to learn from the pros. In this article, we’ll look at companies that built incredible business plans.
Take notes on the structure, format, and details. Hopefully you’ll leave with plenty of inspiration to write your own.
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7-part template for business plan examples
We’ll look at seven business plans that are structured using a seven-part template. Here’s a quick review of those parts:
- Executive summary: A quick overview of your business and the contents of your business plan.
- Company description: More info about your company, its goals and mission, and why you started it in the first place.
- Market analysis: Research about the market and industry your business will operate in, including a competitive analysis about the companies you’ll be up against.
- Products and services: A detailed description of what you’ll be selling to your customers.
- Marketing plan: A strategic outline of how you plan to market and promote your business before, during, and after your company launches into the market.
- Logistics and operations plan: An explanation of the systems, processes, and tools that are needed to run your business in the background.
- Financial plan: A map of your short-term (and even long-term) financial goals and the costs to run the business. If you’re looking for funding, here’s the place to discuss your request and needs.
7 business plan examples (section by section)
In this section, you’ll find hypothetical and real-world examples of each aspect of a business plan to show you how the whole thing comes together.
- Executive summary
Your executive summary offers a high-level overview of the rest of your business plan. You’ll want to include a brief description of your company, market research, competitor analysis, and financial information.
In ThoughtCo’s sample business plan for a fictional company called Acme Management Technology, the executive summary is three paragraphs and occupies nearly half the page:
- Company description
You might go more in-depth with your company description and include the following sections:
- Nature of the business. Mention the general category of business you fall under. Are you a manufacturer, wholesaler, or retailer of your products?
- Background information. Talk about your past experiences and skills, and how you’ve combined them to fill in the market.
- Business structure. This section outlines how you registered your company —as a corporation, sole proprietorship, LLC, or other business type.
- Industry. Which business sector do you operate in? The answer might be technology, merchandising, or another industry.
- Team. Whether you’re the sole full-time employee of your business or you have contractors to support your daily workflow, this is your chance to put them under the spotlight.
You can also repurpose your company description elsewhere, like on your About page, Instagram page, or other properties that ask for a boilerplate description of your business. Hair extensions brand Luxy Hair has a blurb on its About page that could easily be repurposed as a company description for its business plan.
- Market analysis
Market analysis comprises research on product supply and demand, your target market, the competitive landscape, and industry trends. You might do a SWOT analysis to learn where you stand and identify market gaps that you could exploit to establish your footing. Here’s an example of a SWOT analysis we did for a hypothetical ecommerce business:
You’ll also want to run a competitive analysis as part of the market analysis component for your business plan. This will show you who you’re up against and give you ideas on how to gain an edge over the competition.
- Products and services
This part of your business plan describes your product or service, how it will be priced, and the ways it will compete against similar offerings in the market. Don’t go into too much detail here —a few lines are enough to introduce your item to the reader.
- Marketing plan
Potential investors will want to know how you’ll get the word out about your business. As such, it’s essential to build a marketing plan that highlights the promotion and customer acquisition strategies you’re planning to adopt.
Most marketing plans focus on the four Ps: product, price, place, and promotion. However, it’s easier when you break it down by the different marketing channels . Mention how you intend to promote your business using blogs, email, social media, and word-of-mouth marketing.
Here’s an example of a hypothetical marketing plan for a real estate website:
Logistics and operations
This section of your business plan provides information about your production, facilities, production, equipment, shipping and fulfillment, and inventory.
Financial plan
The financial plan (a.k.a. financial statement) offers a breakdown of your sales, revenue, expenses, profit, and other financial metrics. You’ll want to include all the numbers and concrete data to project your current and projected financial state. For example, the financial statement for ecommerce brand Nature’s Candy includes forecasted revenue, expenses, and net profit in graphs.
It then goes deeper into the financials, citing:
- Funding needs
- Project cash-flow statement
- Project profit-and-loss statement
- Projected balance sheet
You can use Shopify’s financial plan template to create your own income statement, cash-flow statement, and balance sheet.
Types of business plan (and what to write for each)
A one-page business plan is a pared down version of a standard business plan that’s easy for potential investors and partners to understand. You’ll want to include all of the sections, but make sure they’re abbreviated and summarized.
- Logistics and operations plan
- Financials
A startup business plan is meant to secure outside funding for a new business. Typically, there’s a big focus on the financials, as well as other sections that help determine the viability of your business idea —market analysis, for example.
- Market research: in depth
- Financials: in depth
Internal
Your internal business plan acts as the enforcer of your company’s vision. It reminds your team of the long-term objective and keeps them strategically aligned toward the same goal.
- Market research
Feasibility
A feasibility business plan is essentially a feasibility study that helps you evaluate whether your product or idea is worthy of a full business plan.
Mix and match to make a killer business plan
The good news is: there’s no single right way to write a business plan. If you’re feeling unsure about how to craft yours, pull bits and pieces that you like from other examples, and leave out the parts that don’t apply or make sense for you.
The important thing is to clearly communicate your reason for starting the company, what’s needed to operate it, and how you plan to make it work in the long run.
When you can convince others that you have a killer game plan, you’ve nailed it.
Want to learn more?
- Question: Are You a Business Owner or an Entrepreneur?
- Bootstrapping a Business: 10 Tips to Help You Succeed
- Entrepreneurial Mindset: 20 Ways to Think Like an Entrepreneur
- 101+ Best Small Business Software Programs
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Options and Tips for Creating a Web Design Business Plan
Don’t get too intimidated by writing a web design business plan, a lot of it just means getting down onto paper things you likely have been considering anyway. According to Entrepreneur “Writing…
Estimated Read Time: 40 minutes
Don’t get too intimidated by writing a web design business plan , a lot of it just means getting down onto paper things you likely have been considering anyway. According to Entrepreneur “Writing out your business plan forces you to review everything at once: your value proposition, marketing assumptions, operations plan, financial plan and staffing plan.”
If I can do it – and go from 1 to 10 people in three years, you can too 😉 My wife will tell you… I’m no genius.
Table of Contents
Main Points in a Web Design Business Plan Outline:
1. business concept –.
What is the web design industry like in your immediate area and region? What are the high-level possibilities for the success of your web design business? What are the prime differentiating factors and how you will set yourself apart from the competition?
2. Who is the market for your web design firm?
Who are your customers? Are you serving only mid-sized businesses? Only editorial publications? Churches? Non-profits? Teenie tiny mom and pop shops? Fortune 500 companies? What niche are you looking to serve? What is the demand like for the service? And this leads us into our next question.. What does your pricing need to look like to serve these customers? And it’s not always getting your price down into affordability; maybe you need to price higher so that your company seems more professional and that you can offer above and beyond service. “Price high and justify.”
3. Income and Cash Flow Statement, Balance Sheet etc.
“Start by estimating the revenues generated by an average sale. Then subtract the costs that change with each transaction, like sales commissions and costs of producing the products sold. The result is your “unit contribution.” Next, predict your monthly overhead, or expenses that don’t vary directly with sales volume, such as rent, salaries, utilities, legal fees, and accounting expenses. Finally, divide your monthly overhead by your unit contribution. That number will tell you how many transactions you’ll need per month to break-even.” From this article on Inc. of The Basics of a Business Plan by the Numbers.
Get started with this One Page Web Design Business Plan
General Principles for writing a Web Design Business Plan:
1. Keep your business plan short and simple.
Go for it right now with this One Page Web Design Business Plan .
2. Use visual charts to quickly show key numbers.
3. Do what you do best, and make it look professional.
4. Ask key questions like what will be it’s annual revenue in a year, and in 5 years.
5. What things can I delegate? Sales, Technical or others? How will you attract these people to help, and what will be your key differentiators of process and culture?
6. Is the business plan going to help you raise money?
7. How much of an initial investment will the business need?
Tools for Creating a Business Plan:
1. LivePlan.com – Visual planning tool, helpful if you really don’t know where to start. It will give you the sections and the template is already there.
2. The Art of The Start 2.0 (Book by Guy Kawasaki) – “It’s most relevant for technology or IT companies, but he has a way of writing that’s very clear, very to the point. There’s not a lot of pedantic info that you’ll find in textbooks.”
3. Score – Business Planning Templates – Quickly assess your marketing plan, Free business listing list for search engine optimization, Marketing must haves etc.
Thank you for reading! Share the love. 🙂
Keep the content coming, by tweeting this.
Other Links related to Web Design Plans:
- Web Design Sample Business Plan – Executive Summary
- 9 Steps to starting your freelance web design business – Business Tuts
- Plan a Web Development Business Part Two- BPlans
- How to Make a Business Plan for a Website Development Startup – Color Whistle
Getting Your First Web Design Clients
My first web design client was my future mother-in-law, a real doozie. A non-profit, I was paid $500 and an iPad. I’ve also been paid as little as – negative $ for making a website, because I was so eager for real world experience. Do you want a website? I want to give you one.. just let me pay for your hosting and I’ll make the website out of the salt from the sweat of my children.
Don’t sell yourself short. Charge a decent amount.
So the first real website I sold was a couple months later. I was just learning WordPress and I sold a site for 10 monthly payments of $250 dollars. Because it was a fairly simple marketing website and didn’t have a ton of custom features on it, this was actually a pretty solid deal for a starting out web designer.
The first half of selling yourself as a web designer is evidence. Let’s see the goods.
Make sure you have a decent portfolio out there, that you made yourself..
I don’t care if it’s on WordPress, straight HTML, or Ruby on Rails. Get that thing out in the open, give it the best you got and make sure it shows the best of your best work. Code up a non-profit’s website for free if you have to, and show as many real projects as you possibly can. I iterated on my website 3 times, with 2 live at my domain before I ever got my first real set of clients. It doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to exist.
Here’s my site I made in 2012 (click here to see it in the Internet Wayback Machine):
Here’s the site in 2013 (click here to see it in the Internet Wayback Machine):
Yes.. I agree my portfolio was a little weak at this point, but guess what? I was getting clients. I wasn’t by any means, raking them in, but people I knew were coming to me and asking if I could help with their website or help them make a new website. I was eager to be of service, and make enough money to stop bussing tables.
Let the world know you’re making websites now.
Change your job on Facebook to ‘Self Employed Web Designer’, change your LinkedIn – don’t put Aspiring Web Designer in your Twitter profile, put Web Designer. You’re a big boy (or girl) now. I personally took a good hard running jump at web design, and with one client and one month covered in expenses jumped out into the market as a web designer. No more restaurant job (which for me didn’t pay THAT well anyways.) When people hear that’s what you do, and you take a friendly and helpful attitude when they reach out, or you offer your services you can quickly earn some awareness around the new service you offer.
Don’t wait until you have it perfected, just go for it.
I’m not suggesting you make the new 3M website, or try to sell yourself as a ten year veteran of website design. You can, however, say you will go above and beyond for a client as you are starting out fresh and will do everything in your power to make them an excellent website. If you’ve created a couple of examples, then that can help adjust expectations and although you may need to put ungodly amounts of time into your first couple websites you will earn your chops in the struggle. You’ll figure out how to z-index a logo over the top of overlapping nav div.
In defense of the designer-developer.
Yes, I’m suggesting you will have to write code. Can you sell a website for $2,500 dollars and give half of it away to a front-end developer when you’re starting out? Perhaps, perhaps not. I personally couldn’t, and so… I learned to code. Basics at first, how to modify WordPress themes ever so slightly with CSS. Then cutting and splicing bits of PHP, then eventually writing my own themes from scratch. This is why I suggest having a couple of websites under your belt before really having someone pay you for your web design services; you can find the rhythm that works for you. If you are an epic visual designer who can confidently charge $5,000 for your first website you could potentially find the right person to develop it for you and you can pay them adequately to make it good. It’s really to each is own, because I preach design/development, and you have an equally right person 2 doors down who wouldn’t touch a CMS to save his life. Literally … my old neighbor above me would sell sites for 7-8k and I thought he was an internet god. He would write the HTML, CSS, and Javascript (In Dreamweaver, hello throwback,) and then outsource custom Content Management System development for 2k. I just wanted to learn how to not pay that 2k .
Other ways to promote your new web design business
- Look for ways to trade your services for advertising : I sold my services in an auction by a Minneapolis newspaper in exchange for adspace in their lifestyle magazine VitaMN.
- Get every viable social media handle/url under the name you’re using to freelance , promote yourself vigorously on TWO of these, and understand you’re not going to do ALL of them well .
- Make a list of all the acquaintances who have small businesses, and that could use a website. Send them a quick note, and always be of the mind that you’re there to be of service – not sell.
- Go old school and create a flyer : I put boots on the ground and peddled my wares (a one page services sheet – without pricing on it) around every business that I could open the door to in my area of Uptown Minnesota. I focused on what I did that was different. Alot of times this is personal service, since you likely have less clients and more time and attention than alot of web design shops in town. – To be perfectly honest, this didn’t get me a client. Maybe what I’m really suggesting here is hustling your ass off and being as present as possible… take every opportunity to share what you do until you gain momentum.
- Put out content on a blog on your website and promote it on social media : Don’t sell dude. Don’t do it. You can still see my oldest posts on this blog that are salesy… it’s not going to kill your blog, but it’s really boring and no-one wants to read those. Just give as much value as you can, share your experiences and focus on the ONE SERVICE you are really trying to sell and things you’re learning in that discipline. Use it as an opportunity to dig deeper into your craft, and to share as you go.
Price High and Justify
After you promote the living shit out of yourself on social media, talk to your long lost friend with a supplement or house painting business, and make a few mistakes it’s time to price high and justify . You have to charge what people will pay, but as soon as you can push that number up as high as it can reasonably go. Why? If you have high prices it means you can make more excellent work! Justify the price with above and beyond service and you’ll feel great about what you do. Your work will mean more profitable businesses that benefit from the excellent websites you make. It feels good to help people feed their families by helping them get the word out about what makes their business special. And in the end, that’s what it boils down to for me.
Make Sure Your Process Differentiates You from Competitors
It’s important to recognize what your business’s competitive advantage is, and unless you want to build a business that depends upon what’s special about YOU as an individual you have to draw out and nurture the special things about your process. To focus on your own unique specialties alone builds a prison fortress around you, and if you ever want to hire or contract out parts of the business you’re stuck with a business that only works with you sweating away at the center of it; the wizard behind the curtain, slowly getting too tired to perform at the same level.
So for me the key pieces of my web design process as I am learning to define them are:
1. responsiveness to changes that clients need..
– Example: Client asks for a lighter color scheme in development, instead of fretting we work hard to satisfy the request and push back when appropriate to keep within a reasonable budget.
Key to fulfilling: Web design services should not be dirt cheap, and if they are they aren’t taking into consideration the time it takes to build something fully customized for the business’s needs. Templated solutions get generic unfulfilling results. (However, I still feel that for some customers templated solutions such as Squarespace.com and WordPress Themes from Themeforest without custom code can occasionally fulfill their needs and suggest that they try those routes if their budget doesn’t allow to really hire someone to do it right.)
2. Examining the overall market for the client and tailoring the content on the site to the scenarios that could be useful to their favorite kinds of clients.
– Example: Your site is serving people who just suffered hail damage to their home, we assess that a key to surprising and delighting these types of customers is serving up content that is about how to buff out hail damage on their car.
Key to fulfilling: It’s crucial we think about the psychology of the people coming into the site. This is the number one question we ask when making a website: “how can we serve your ideal customer with this content, this imagery, the messages we’re sharing and the story we’re telling.”
3. Building out the main service pages of the website in the hope that the content will attract new customers, making key items like ‘contact us’ and ‘buy now’ super easy to access on the main promos, sidebars, and at the end of content.
– Example: Adding bigger content pieces after key visual blocks on service pages so that the service page is indexable by Google and people who want to really dig into what you have that option. Big old juicy buttons that say “Contact us now” or “Request a quote” are super obvious and surrounded by trust factors such as positive testimonials, industry badges, a phone number, or 3 key differentiating features in bullet points.
Keys to fulfilling: It’s important not only to think about how people are going to perceive this site when they get there but how they are going to get there in the first place. By thinking about big content pieces that could provide big value for the client during the design process, the website can be built in a way that emphasizes and makes those big content pieces that are serving a real need available and to the forefront of the site with menu structure, and other pieces of navigation and structure.
4. Imagery is outside the box, and elicits a positive emotional response from key individuals your business is targeting.
– Example: A Death to Stock Photo image that feels less stock photo-esque and more candid than most stock photos.
Even better, you and your storefront, your set of tools. An ACTUAL satisfied client, smiling and holding your product or enjoying your work.
Keys to fulfilling: Often this involves imagining what a positive interaction between your business and your client will look like. Is it you sitting with them, them smiling, and a chart of upward momentum on the computer screen in front of you? Is it freshly cut grass without them lifting a finger, so they get to smile and sip fresh lemonade on their porch? This is the story we want to display. We want the imagery to feel candid, real and maybe even a bit unusual. But a visitor should be able to see it and think to themselves, I want to be there. They should be able to imagine themselves in the place of the person pictured on the site.
5. The copy is written in a way that quickly explains the core benefit/value from your product or service, invites the visitor to participate, and explains why it will be awesome for them.
– Example: A moving company could say “Your back will thank you, call us for a custom quote today.” A remodeling company could say, “You’ll feel as good as your home will look.” with a call to action button that says, “Get a quote for a fresh look.”
Keys to fulfilling: Never be generic! Shake out the cobwebs in your marketing brain right now. Seriously, every single product or service has a unique and special story behind it, and the customers you serve need to know why anyone would choose you . Why have they in the past? I speak to the business owners and people representing businesses in their marketing teams, and I ask: “Tell me the story of positive customer experience, that you’re aware of.” What does that look like. Tell that story on the site. The more you get curious about these stories and the core benefit a product or service is providing, very few things are truly boring. The more you get interested in the story of the product or service, and tell that positive experience story the more you’ll see that almost anything can be interesting.
And the moral of the story is:
As you can see, the key differentiating features of this design process is a personal connection, customizing the solution to the industry and those specific businesses prime differentiating features, and enthusiasm. That enthusiasm through every piece of the puzzle is crucial. It’s important to note at every step of the process that this is for a business composed of REAL PEOPLE, whose food and shelter depends on telling the story to the world, and REAL PEOPLE who benefit from the product or service being served. This is the real end value. So anyone I work with, or for feels that: the enthusiasm and the genuine intent to provide value. This is key to this design process.
How to Speak About Design to Establish Trust
“I thought you might like the flourishes in the header, it has that bohemian, natural feeling you were talking about when we first met up to discuss the project.” = FIRE ME . “Thought you might like,” “Going for that feeling,” and “I was inspired to take a fun direction,” all scream of whimsical dainty little artist types who could literally die from the harsh realities of designing for real economic pressures. The real economic reality is that families food and shelter depends on the success of a business, and a key component of how a business does is how that business presents itself to the world through design.
I’m not saying you can’t feel a feeling and apply it to your work in design, but design isn’t art. It is meant to solve real world problems. So instead of focusing on your feelings while presenting to the client, focus on design principles, web design best practices, and the persona’s and scenario’s you established during your discovery phase. Focus the conversation around:
- Design Principles
- Web Design best practices
- Persona’s and scenario’s
Why do design principles even matter?
I’ve had a couple situations lately, where someone seems to be questioning why a font choice even matters. They rolled their eyes when I mentioned a study that called Baskerville the most trusted font. It got me thinking. How am I presenting this wrong? Because I know in my heart of hearts that design matters. <- FIRE ME, but I can’t seem to always make it dead obvious to people I’m presenting work to.
I want to show them two ads side by side, one with high quality fonts that were chosen with serious intention and one with quickly chosen free fonts , and ask them which of them makes the product they represent seem more expensive, or which one makes the product seem more quality. Because good design does indeed represent products and services in a better light, and makes them seem more high quality. You know that, and I know that, but:
But how do we make the value of design dead obvious?
1. Resolve to help them find solutions to pain points. – Your website looks like shit on mobile, let’s fix that. Your logo has gradients and shadows in it to the point it’s hard to use on shirts and in other simple ways. Let’s address those and work from there how design can help solve problems you’re aware of now. Maybe it expands from there; as a designer, you’re a problem solver and the more you can identify and come up with creative and solid solutions for, the more design solutions you get to get paid for.
2. Dive into their world and become aware of what they value. – For web design you might realize the client cares more about looking cool than contact form submissions. You might realize they value their relationship with their family deeply, that a certain type of customer is their favorite . Once we realize what they care about deeply… pause pause pause …we can help them communicate those values through the design. By diving in, visiting their shop, asking a lot of questions, and being present we can then better let them know how good design will help them do that.
3. Focus on the things they do understand like ‘Trust factors’, ‘color psychology’ and ‘telling the story.’ – ‘We have to tell the story of your business better,’ is going to resonate with some people better than my fascination with the font Baskerville. Even though I deeply care about typography, it’s just not always as accessible of a topic, or as interesting to clients. What they do understand is how adding a Better Business Bureau badge next to the contact form will help increase the likelihood of people contacting them, and how blue is associated with trust and how green get’s associated with natural, fresh, or innovative. This really depends on the particular client, as some clients can go deep without a lot of prep.
Let’s circle back for a bit and make sure you’re working with the right kind of client:
The client defines the value and the designer discovers it. Ask the client what their business or organization does and why is it important to their target audience. If they don’t give you a quick comprehensible answer they are not ready to work with a designer or an agency. If they do answer the question you should next ask them what success looks like and what their goals are. DO NOT lead them toward what you think success might be. Let them define it.
When you get their feedback, dig deeper. A good way to do this is by asking who their target audience is and what their target audience needs are. If they can’t answer this they are not ready for the value a designer or an agency will provide. The client needs to have experience communicating with their target audience in order to set proper goals. If there’s no goal, how will you know whether or not a project is successful? Here are some red flags to look out for in the beginning stages of communicating with a potential client. I asked a fellow designer, Brenna French to share some thoughts on this issue:
“You sit down at a coffee shop excited to talk to a potential client about the project and the first thing they say is, I want to build a website how much would that be? This is a red flag because this means their mindset is already focused on getting a deal and not on the value you can provide for their business or their target audience.
This goes both ways in the relationship by the way, you never want to position the project or conversation around money. If you talk about money right away this shows the client that you are money hungry or desperate for work. Remember you are a professional and you are serious about your work and the value you can provide. Positioning the conversation around value sets the tone for the whole relationship in a positive way.
Say you get past that money conversation and everything is going well so far so you start talking about the project. The client starts to explain that they are wanting a one-page website design and they also want the main colors to be blue and orange because to them those are beautiful colors, oh yeah they also want a picture of themselves in the main header. This is a red flag because they have too many ideas of what they are visually wanting the end product to look like.
As a design professional, I don’t want to execute the client’s wants in mind. I design the best possible solution for the client’s target audience so the client will reach their business goals. From my experience, a client that has a specific visual direction is difficult to work with. Position the conversation around value. By the end of the conversation, you both are excited to get started. You set clear expectations and attracted the client by positioning the conversation around value.”
– Brenna French
Ask these questions of new possible clients: Is the client sure of their target audience?
Is the client aware of their target audience’s needs?
Are they able to answer right away, what is it that you do and why is it important to your target audience?
Do they start talking about their budget right away? (If they do it might be a red flag – try to change the conversation to talk about value that you’ll provide, not an arbitrary number you come with on the fly without fully understanding the project.)
Do they give off the impression that they understand you’re the expert, that they understand that are only responsible for Content – and Business Goals?
Do they have alot of ideas already about how the website should look? – A possible red flag.
That last one is challenging, and occasionally working for small businesses it’s important to kindly educate your clients on what is your responsibility and what is yours. But needless to say, if they come out of the gate giving strong layout suggestions and explaining their specific vision for look and feel you’re being pigeon-holed into the position of technician implementing someone else’s design, not the dynamic problem-solving designer.
Ways to talk and words to use
Talk confidently and make sure to include examples of previous work where you solved a specific goal-oriented problem. Now is the time to ask what their primary objective is, and to set up a metric for the design you’re working on currently. 100 e-mail list subscriptions, 15 contact form submissions by legitimate prospects, 20 sales the first three months of launch. Make specific goals have a date attached to them. Gathering this information after the design should be part of what you’re being paid to do, and part of what you’re selling.
Do user testing on the old site when they come in, if it’s worth testing. Talk about testing critical things. Words and phrases to use: research, effective, goals, trust-worthy, tell your story, appeal to your core demographic. Always do research on their industry before getting into the site design. Their competitors, and brand positioning. By doing this you better understand what they are up against and you position yourself as the expert with a unique understanding of their dilemma. This is another reason to hold off giving a price for the work until you fully understand the problem at hand.
Share research. You don’t always have to have it on hand when you are discussing a particular issue. But you should do your due diligence, if they want a pop-up newsletter subscription box then you should be able to go find the research on which way of doing that is most effective (right away, timed, or exit intent,) or general tips on making a pop-up effective. I find it especially effective to share these bits of research right before you show the design at all. Come up with three pieces of research to support points that might be contentious or that push their comfort level on the design. Share them briefly before going over the design.
When you get into showing the design, avoid the real estate tour; ‘here’s the logo,’ ‘here’s the nav,’ etc. Go straight for the heart of why the design serves their goals. Talk about flow and conversions, and especially focus on how the design presents their story in a unique and compelling way to appeal to their core demographic. Never ask for feedback, ask if they have any questions. In this way, you can further ingrain yourself in their mind as an expert. I think of it as a bit of swagger. Humble swagger, but you have to have some swagger in this industry.
Content Strategy for Web Designers to Attract Ideal Customers
Devising a workable and effective content strategy can be difficult for any company or brand, as the needs and desires of readers, clients, and businesses always vary from individual to individual, and from day to day. With a bit of work and the following content strategy guide to get you started, you should be well on your way to developing a stellar web design content strategy ! The most important part is that you start, and these practical and actionable strategies will help you get your ass in gear.
If you’d like a brief overview of what a content strategy is, check out this brief video by Lynda.com.
Begin with Introspective Evaluation
Before taking that first step down the road of content creation, the best tactic is to initially spend some time to evaluate where your company, your content, and your brand currently stand. Begin this evaluation by honestly answering a few simple questions:
How is our brand currently perceived in the marketplace?
What are good and bad aspects of the brand’s existing content?
What content-related goals would we like to achieve?
How does our brand match up to other web design competitors?
With these basic questions answered about your brand and where your company currently stands, you can move onto an overall content strategy design by answering “The Five Ws”:
Who is the audience of our content?
When should particular content be available?
Where (in which channels) should the content exist?
Why is the content relevant (or) why will the audience care?
What is the message or purpose of the content?
For example, throughout this article I’ll illustrate examples with a fictional up-and-coming web design firm called Green Lemon Design. The Green Lemon team — who are looking to establish themselves in the web design market as a talented, young, and energetic choice for lower to mid-tier web designs — might answer these questions in the following (simplified) form:
Potential clients: Users seeking low- to mid-range website design and consultation services.
Existing clients: Users who have worked with us in the past.
Most content on the website should be available 24/7, while content that is time-sensitive (such as a month-long new client special deal) can be temporary.
Onsite, Blog, Email, Twitter, Facebook
The audience should be seeking professional and affordable web design services that we can offer (for potential customers) or additional customer support and services (for existing clients).
To inform and educate our audience on the skills and capabilities of our brand, to impress with our past successes and portfolio, and to establish good rapport and relationships with both potential and existing clients.
Establishing Brand, Voice, and Tone Guidelines
With the basic questions answered that inform you of a need to change your content strategy , now is a good time to evaluate the brand, voice, and tone guidelines you’ll utilize throughout the content.
Brand guidelines can cover logo design to color pallette and everything in between. For content strategy , the best places to start are:
Fonts and typefaces : What fonts will be used throughout the content? How about sizes for various elements (paragraphs, headers, testimonials, etc)?
Colors and palettes : What colors best suit your brand or company and can be utilized throughout the content? – Example above includes a distinctive color palette that could be applied to other elements.
Images and logos : Which particular static images or logos should be prominent throughout the content? – It’s useful to repeat symbols such as the ‘greenish lemon’ throughout this piece. This may be particular to the content you put out on your site in general, or a particular blog post or content hub.
Videos and animations : As above, are there any video clips that should be frequent or readily available somewhere in the content?
Voice & Tone
Determine early in the process what kind of voice and tone you wish to attach to your content and thus associate with your brand. This can be difficult at first, particularly without much in the way of experienced writers on staff, but finding an appropriate voice can be a huge boon to your content strategy as a whole.
For example, Green Lemon Web Design may elect to take on a very informal, even humorous tone throughout their content. As a young and fresh company, they may feel most comfortable keeping their tone light-hearted and fun, to attract the business and clientele of smaller, younger companies like themselves.
Onsite Content: The Bread of Your Content Strategy Sandwich
Time to get down to the real core of your content strategy by first devising the outline of content that should exist onsite. Remember, anything that exists on the company or brand website (with the exception of the blog) is considered onsite content and should be under your complete control.
For our fictitious Green Lemon Web Design, the outline for onsite content strategy might include the following sections:
Voice & Tone : Errors/alerts, testimonials, FAQ, portfolio should have a fun and humorous tone, while a more serious, business tone is necessary for transactional and billing-related messages.
Images : In addition to the logo and color palette established previously, we’d like some professional photography to splash through the core onsite pages (about us, contact us, etc), but with a refreshing twist: Each photo should contain a small green lemon strategically placed and tucked somewhere in the graphic, to bring a branded element into the design for brand awareness and maximum impact.
Portfolio : A list of clients we’ve assisted in the past with small testimonials from business partners from each when relevant.
About Us : Details about how Green Lemon came to be, including headshots of all employees with short, fun bios from each. Employees must provide a quote (think high school graduation yearbook quote, or ask a curious question to get your team showing their true colors.) In my experience looking at analytics for a lot of sites, people visit these pages more than you might initially think. It make sense, because we want to know about the people in your business. Tell us more, give us the inside scoop, tell your story.
Contact Us/Get a Quote : Standard form with name, email, and (optional) telephone fields for potential clients to get in touch. Should we include our company promise to establish return correspondence within 4 hours?
FAQ : Answer basic questions, primarily focused at potential customers. What is our typical turnaround time? What post-design support can we offer? Include a handful of fun and humorous questions at the end as well.
Services : Describe all services we offer, broken into categories (consultation, marketing, technology, industries, etc).
Errors & Alerts : 404 error should be squeezed green lemon with one final drop of juice falling out. Logged in clients with unread messages or invoices should see amusing flash message on each screen until dismissed. Little alerts and responses to contact form inquiries can be an opportunity to show a bit of the companies friendly, human character as well as display being adept with technology and attention to detail.
Blog Posts: That’s the Good Stuff
While strong onsite content is of course critical to the success of any strategy, very often the real meat and potatoes of your online presence is contained within the blog. The blog offers an avenue for expressing ideas and sharing content that is timely, relevant, and inspirational for the audience.
A blog is also a more appropriate channel to take risks — even slight ones — with the content your brand produces. Blog content can be anything from industry news and competitor-vs.-self comparisons to tutorials and how-to guides.
A successful blog is a channel for content that relates to the brand or company, but then extends well beyond the purview of the brand to provide relevant and interesting content for the audience to consume.
Don’t get caught in the old-school idea of a blog, where one or a handful of curators post personal stories and anecdotes. While that type of content is certainly acceptable and sometimes appropriate to a modern blog, try to expand the content well outside the bounds of that traditionally small umbrella.
For example, Green Lemon might highlight some potential blog ideas for their new web designer content strategy :
Leveraging Influencers
A post discussing highly influential creatives in the design space and how they have inspired Green Lemon and other designers. We should emphasize the great projects these creatives have worked on over the years to entice our readers by illustrating how Green Lemon understands the industry and that our team (or freelancer) strives to meet the same standards of excellence.
Discuss the importance of social media contact, even amongst these influences, by tagging them on Twitter with a link to the blog post. An ideal tactic is not to directly ask a question of the power user in question, but to ask a question of our general Twitter audience (e.g. “Designers: How has @Influencer inspired you in your own projects? #GreenLemonDreaming”).
Content Hub Posts
Posts that emphasize a highly-curated and relevant series of links and posts found elsewhere that relate to a particular topic, such as web design. Since a popular group of articles gathered in this singular “content hub”-style post will drive a lot of SEO traffic and referral linkbacks to our site, we can be confident that the effort in putting together these posts is worthwhile and will generate a great deal of buzz and traffic for Green Lemon.
Emphasizing Keywords
As a relatively new company, we cannot be afraid to try emphasizing localized keywords to drive interest and traffic to Green Lemon and bring in potential clients.
A great technique is to create a series of blog posts that highlight particular keywords and heavily focus the relevant aspects of the content on those keywords.
To drive localized traffic we can start with “Web Design in Minneapolis” and “Web Design in Minnesota,” which should feature some location-specific content mixed into the standard information. This can be as simple as pictures or mentions of local attractions in the city or state that residents of these areas who read the article will relate to.
Conversely, we’ll need more broad language and images to accompany our post about “WordPress Web Design,” which should shy away from localized content but instead contain information solely about the techniques and technologies (CMS organization, colors/typefaces, content release schedule, etc).
Inactivity is a Death Sentence
While the initial questions and answers when getting started in the content strategy process as seen above might seem at first to provide only a very rudimentary insight the steps to implement a strategy, there is one key lesson to learn when it comes to anything related to content: Don’t get bogged down by the minutiae and thus never take action .
The biggest mistake anyone can make when it comes to content strategy is to be too passive, to over-assess and over-plan to the point of inaction. Particularly in the online space — where content moves at the speed of light (both figuratively and literally) — failing to act at all on a new content strategy is far worse than taking action and modifying or adjusting the content strategy plan as you learn and grow along the way.
That’s not to say planning and strategy are not important, but in many situations for both companies and clients alike, it is far more important to just “get out there” with the content so the audience can begin to interact with the content or brand than it is to delay far too long with nothing to show for it from a public perspective.
Maintaining Your Flexibility
Content strategies come in all shapes and sizes and should not be solely thought of as a brand-wide, all-inclusive methodology for every piece of content the brand creates.
Instead, content strategies can and should be developed in a modular fashion. Similar to a well-crafted website, an interchangeable content strategy allows for flexibility throughout the process over time, as variables change and the success (or failure) of a particular strategy evolves over time.
This technique should most commonly be used to distinguish between the various channels in which your content resides. A strategy module that suits email campaigns is likely not as well suited for handling social media interactions on Twitter, just as the static onsite content used throughout the site will differ significantly from the content posted on a blog.
Embrace these differences and freely develop multiple modules of your content strategy to fit each appropriate channel. You can and should still maintain an overall parent strategy that infuses elements into every child strategy below that (fonts, colors, common logos/images, etc), but much of the content beyond that will shift as the medium changes.
The Necessity of Taking Risks
A very useful tool when first developing a content strategy is to evaluate the various levels of “risk” involved in any given style or example of content. That is, when a reader or user engages with that content, how likely are they to expect it versus how likely are they to be pleasantly surprised? Additionally as the content creator, how likely is a piece of content to feel standard and safe versus something risky that could fail or be taken poorly, but provide benefit if successful?
There are numerous risk strategies out there, but a solid standard for content strategy used by Portent, Inc. is the 70-20-10 rule .
This rule effectively states that 70% of your content should be safe and expected, 20% should be moderately risky and challenges the standard 70% of your content, and the last 10% should be very risky , such that it is entirely unexpected content or may horribly fail in some way (but will offer large benefits if successful).
For the fictitious Green Lemon Web Design, they have elected to disperse their content using the 70-20-10 rule in roughly this manner:
70%: Most onsite stuff, such as About Us, FAQ, Services, Contact Us/Get a Quote, etc.
20%: Most blog posts that relate to the industry; those that provide assistance to clients, potential customers, or casual readers.
10%: A handful of blog posts that go against the normal, such as emphasizing the great work our competitors have been doing in the past few months or a post about a seemingly unrelated topic to drive traffic and user interest (books, gaming, fishing, etc). We’d also like to add a comparison chart of services and pricing between Green Lemon and popular competitors, which may include features we are weaker at than others but may ingratiate readers to us for our honesty.
Whatever the exact risk assessment is that your own brand settles on, it is vital to not be too afraid of taking risks from time to time. Being a little out there or edgy with your content will make a lasting, memorable impression instead of the countless other examples that are boring and forgotten after a short glance.
A Handful of Content Examples
Below you’ll find a list of example content titles that a new web design firm like Green Lemon — or even you — might find useful to pursue, roughly categorized by intended audience and/or creators.
For Web Designers
Web-for-All: Accessibility for Modern Web Design
Why Improved Design Cannot Solve Content Issues
Content Optimization for Mobile Platforms
Why Email Requires a Responsive Design
And Dash of That..: How A/B Testing Dramatically Improves User Experience
A Bridge Too Far: When Additional Feature Requests Should Be Ignored
This Ain’t Your Granddad’s Pixel: How Modern Displays Are Changing Web Design
Creating Beautiful Graphics and Logos in Pure CSS
The Homepage: When Automation Must Take a Back Seat to Human Control
For Web Marketers
Identifying Your Audience and Content to Meet User Demands
Community is Everything: Why Building a Community is Critical to Content Strategy
Risk vs. Reward: Why Safe is Often the Least Safe
Cultivating Client Relationships
I Like You: Spreading Your Content via Third Party Services
Localization, Love, and Liberation: Why i18n is Critical to Content Strategy
For Clients
Miniature Adults: How Children Utilize the Web and Interact with Your Site
Stay Awhile and Listen: How to Genuinely Engage with Readers
Establishing a Content Strategy for Personal Websites
Online Trapdom: Why Free Services Rarely Are
Just You Being You: How Social Media Encourages a False Sense of Self
Look At All My Resources!
While this article should provide a great starting point to establishing your own web marketer content strategy , there are multitudes of resources online with great information to boost your knowledge and get you down the right path toward content nirvana.
Below are a handful of prime resources to chew through at your leisure, so please enjoy!
Creating a Content Compass : Explores the diverging content strategy of a particular web project across the entirety of a brand’s content universe.
The Magic Content Marketing Ratio: Email Conversion Rate
4 Keys to Capturing a New Audience for Your Content Marketing
Being Real Builds Trust : Discusses why trust with users and clients is among the most vital components of strong marketing content strategy .
Help Your Content Go Anywhere With a Mobile Content Strategy
Future-Ready Content : Developing a web design content strategy that is as future-proof as possible, not just technically but in the manner in which content is created.
Contently Comic: Sponsored Insanity : Explores the pitfalls and trouble that can come from unnecessary sponsored content.
The Most Important Audience for Your Content Marketing : Your Own Employees : How brand and businesses should ensure employees fully understand and adhere to the marketing content strategy .
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Website Planning Templates | Website Planning Guide
Most people assume that to build a great website, your priority should be on technical aspects or being good at the design stuff. However, we disagree.
Great websites are not built on a whim. They are planned and then built (and frequently updated).
So this guide will help you set you up for success with your new website by giving you a solid plan to start with. You can give this to an external developer/agency or use it as an internal reference if your own team is working on it. Regardless of how you execute, website planning will make everything better.
1. Phase 1: Pre Website Planning
1.1. Determine Your Website Objectives
1.1.1. Analyze the Websites of Your Top Competitors and Market Trends
2. Phase 2: Information Architecture and User Flows
2.1. Organize Information with Information Architecture
2.2. Define Your Website’s Structure Using a Site Map
2.2.1. Sketch your sitemap
2.2.2. Use a clean layout
2.2.3. Color to create a visual treat
2.2.4. Style all the navigation links
2.2.5. Suggest URLs for each page
2.2.6. Create links to test your framework
2.2.7. Identify the Navigation Flow of Your Visitor
3. Phase 3: Design Layouts and Site Infrastructure
3.1. Identify Key Colors, Elements and Styles with a Mood Board
3.1.1. Arrange Page Elements with Wireframes
3.1.2. Finalize the Design with UI Mockups
4. Phase 4: Promotion and Marketing
4.1. Brainstorm Ideas for Promoting Your Site
4.1.1. Website Development Flowchart
4.2. Ready to Plan Your Website?
If you want a document to fill out and then present, we have downloadable Word and Google Docs files which include some great Creately templates.
Get the website planning templates here;
Download the Word Document Template
Phase 1: Pre Website Planning
Determine your website objectives.
A clear business objective is the first step towards creating a successful website.
Whether it is to generate more leads or sell your product in foreign markets, once you know what you want to do with the website, everything else – from the type of information you should add on your site to its design – will be so much easier to decide.
Analyze the Websites of Your Top Competitors and Market Trends
Once launched, your website won’t be the only one out there selling or promoting the type of product you’ve got.
This is why you need to see what’s already out there and compare them with what you have in mind.
- Look into the websites of your competitors and other industry websites as well. They will not only inspire you but will also give you an idea as to what you should and shouldn’t include on the website.
- Examine what trends are leading your market at the time . This will help you create a website that is both relevant and useful to your potential customers.
Use the following mind map to organize the information you collect on the websites of your top competitors and market trends. Share it with your team and get their input as well.
Bringing all this into a single mind map gives you the chance to spot patterns and understand the space in a different sense.
Phase 2: Information Architecture and User Flows
Organize information with information architecture.
This is where you consider what the user expects to see and the content you want users to associate with each section of the website.
Information architecture helps you determine the usability of your website design – or in other words, make sense of how information on your site is displayed and accessed.
Learn how to properly create an information architecture of your website in six steps here .
Define Your Website’s Structure Using a Site Map
In layman’s terms website map is a tool for planning and designing websites. Visualizing your website using a sitemap (also known as a site architecture map) is a decisive step because it helps in creating coherent navigation paths for users to follow through the website. With this framework in place, you can think logically understand and consider how your users will navigate through the site, then tailor content to them.
Sketch your sitemap
Use a sitemap drawing tool or plain pen and paper to sketch your sitemap out. Using standard sheets of paper may not be enough to accommodate all your design thoughts and ideas, so you have to preferably use more paper or to keep it simple, just use a sitemap tool to get this job done. And keep the design layouts organized in folders online or on your local disk instead of wasting time looking around for papers you know you have somewhere.
Use a clean layout
What is the best layout to illustrate your website’s structure? Start by drawing a page icon in the middle, this will represent the homepage. From there, more page icons will branch out horizontally to indicate other pages within the website. Within minutes, you will have the horizontal diagrammatic representation of the structure of your website in the top-down structure.
Color to create a visual treat
Color up the shapes on your sitemap structure to produce unmatched levels of aesthetics delivering a unique visual treat and bringing the entire sitemap to life. You can give the homepage one color and each of the subsequent sections can be shaded differently to show the hierarchy of pages.
Style all the navigation links
Each Web page in the sitemap is represented as a page icon. Navigation links (connectors) are used to connect the page icons to illustrate the relationships that exist between the pages. These connectors can be either straight, curved, or sharp-angled. See the image below to understand how each of these connector styles affects the overall look of the sitemap.
Suggest URLs for each page
The importance of a web page’s URL structure is always a debated topic. SEO experts consider placing keywords in the URLs important. Thus, suggesting URLs in the page icons will help clients understand the intended URL structure as a part of the interface.
Create links to test your framework
You are definitely happy that the framework is ready to be sent for review. But it’s always best to test the framework by linking the individual page icon to the respective wireframes of mockups to show the client a clear view of the overall web design project. This will save a lot of time and effort and also help your clients evaluate the functionality and consistency of the existing sitemap structure.
Use the following sitemap template to get started on yours.
Identify the Navigation Flow of Your Visitor
This is where you dig into the data (that you found while creating the information architecture of your site) on information-seeking behavior of your audience and try to uncover a pattern in it.
Using a flowchart , you can map and identify all the pages and touchpoints your ideal visitor would interact with when navigating through your website. User flow is how you figure out what you need to give (in the form of phrases, paragraphs or images) to your visitor to keep them from bouncing off your site.
Phase 3: Design Layouts and Site Infrastructure
Identify key colors, elements and styles with a mood board.
A mood board can help you create a website look that matches your brand personality which includes your brand voice and brand style.
A usual website mood board should cover
- color palette
- photography or illustration style
- fonts/ typography
- use of space
- navigation style
If you are looking for great website design inspiration, checkout www.pages.xyz .
Arrange Page Elements with Wireframes
Wireframes help you define the hierarchy of content on your design . By referring to the information architecture you created earlier, form the layout of the website pages with the help of a wireframe .
Keep in mind how you want your site visitors to process information when doing so.
It’s also the first step in figuring out how each page on the website is linked to each other.
Tip: Start with wireframes for smaller screens and start your way up. It’s the only hassle-free way to create a responsive website design.
Finalize the Design with UI Mockups
UI mockups allow you to identify issues with your final design before you launch the website. With it, you can flesh out your wireframe and visualize the final outcome of typography, iconography, color themes, layouts and navigation.
Phase 4: Promotion and Marketing
Brainstorm ideas for promoting your site.
Once the site is launched, you need to attract visitors to it. This is where site promotion comes in and it involves many tasks like search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, targeted advertising etc.
Get your marketing team together and brainstorm different ways to market and promote your new website. A mind map can help you organize all your ideas and come up with a proper marketing strategy.
Website Development Flowchart
Ready to Plan Your Website?
We’ve covered planning a website in 8 easy steps under 4 different stages of website planning. Use our website planning template to get started right away.
Would like to add something to our website planning guide? Let us know in the comment section below.
And if you are ready for the next stage of your marketing plan, here’s a handy guide to mobile app planning .
Want to increase traffic to your website? Here are 7 easy steps to increase traffic to your website .
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Amanda Athuraliya is the communication specialist/content writer at Creately, online diagramming and collaboration tool. She is an avid reader, a budding writer and a passionate researcher who loves to write about all kinds of topics.
Simple Business Plan Template (2023)
Reviewed By
Updated: Dec 16, 2022, 11:45pm
Table of Contents
Why business plans are vital, get your free simple business plan template, how to write an effective business plan in 6 steps, frequently asked questions.
While taking many forms and serving many purposes, they all have one thing in common: business plans help you establish your goals and define the means for achieving them. Our simple business plan template covers everything you need to consider when launching a side gig, solo operation or small business. By following this step-by-step process, you might even uncover a few alternate routes to success.
Whether you’re a first-time solopreneur or a seasoned business owner, the planning process challenges you to examine the costs and tasks involved in bringing a product or service to market. The process can also help you spot new income opportunities and hone in on the most profitable business models.
Though vital, business planning doesn’t have to be a chore. Business plans for lean startups and solopreneurs can simply outline the business concept, sales proposition, target customers and sketch out a plan of action to bring the product or service to market. However, if you’re seeking startup funding or partnership opportunities, you’ll need a write a business plan that details market research, operating costs and revenue forecasting.
Whichever startup category you fall into, if you’re at square one, our simple business plan template will point you down the right path.
Copy our free simple business plan template so you can fill in the blanks as we explore each element of your business plan. Need help getting your ideas flowing? You’ll also find several startup scenario examples below.
Download free template as .docx
Whether you need a quick-launch overview or an in-depth plan for investors, any business plan should cover the six key elements outlined in our free template and explained below. The main difference in starting a small business versus an investor-funded business is the market research and operational and financial details needed to support the concept.
1. Your Mission or Vision
Start by declaring a “dream statement” for your business. You can call this your executive summary, vision statement or mission. Whatever the name, the first part of your business plan summarizes your idea by answering five questions. Keep it brief, such as an elevator pitch. You’ll expand these answers in the following sections of the simple business plan template.
- What does your business do? Are you selling products, services, information or a combination?
- Where does this happen? Will you conduct business online, in-store, via mobile means or in a specific location or environment?
- Who does your business benefit? Who is your target market and ideal customer for your concept?
- Why would potential customers care? What would make your ideal customers take notice of your business?
- How do your products and/or services outshine the competition? What would make your ideal customers choose you over a competitor?
These answers come easily if you have a solid concept for your business, but don’t worry if you get stuck. Use the rest of your plan template to brainstorm ideas and tactics. You’ll quickly find these answers and possibly new directions as you explore your ideas and options.
2. Offer and Value Proposition
This is where you detail your offer, such as selling products, providing services or both, and why anyone would care. That’s the value proposition. Specifically, you’ll expand on your answers to the first and fourth bullets from your mission/vision.
As you complete this section, you might find that exploring value propositions uncovers marketable business opportunities that you hadn’t yet considered. So spend some time brainstorming the possibilities in this section.
For example, a cottage baker startup specializing in gluten-free or keto-friendly products might be a value proposition that certain audiences care deeply about. Plus, you could expand on that value proposition by offering wedding and other special-occasion cakes that incorporate gluten-free, keto-friendly and traditional cake elements that all guests can enjoy.
3. Audience and Ideal Customer
Here is where you explore bullet point number three, who your business will benefit. Identifying your ideal customer and exploring a broader audience for your goods or services is essential in defining your sales and marketing strategies, plus it helps fine-tune what you offer.
There are many ways to research potential audiences, but a shortcut is to simply identify a problem that people have that your product or service can solve. If you start from the position of being a problem solver, it’s easy to define your audience and describe the wants and needs of your ideal customer for marketing efforts.
Using the cottage baker startup example, a problem people might have is finding fresh-baked gluten-free or keto-friendly sweets. Examining the wants and needs of these people might reveal a target audience that is health-conscious or possibly dealing with health issues and willing to spend more for hard-to-find items.
However, it’s essential to have a customer base that can support your business. You can be too specialized. For example, our baker startup can attract a broader audience and boost revenue by offering a wider selection of traditional baked goods alongside its gluten-free and keto-focused specialties.
4. Revenue Streams, Sales Channels and Marketing
Thanks to our internet-driven economy, startups have many revenue opportunities and can connect with target audiences through various channels. Revenue streams and sales channels also serve as marketing vehicles, so you can cover all three in this section.
Revenue Streams
Revenue streams are the many ways you can make money in your business. In your plan template, list how you’ll make money upon launch, plus include ideas for future expansion. The income possibilities just might surprise you.
For example, our cottage baker startup might consider these revenue streams:
- Product sales : Online, pop-up shops , wholesale and (future) in-store sales
- Affiliate income : Monetize blog and social media posts with affiliate links
- Advertising income : Reserve website space for advertising
- E-book sales : (future) Publish recipe e-books targeting gluten-free and keto-friendly dessert niches
- Video income : (future) Monetize a YouTube channel featuring how-to videos for the gluten-free and keto-friendly dessert niches
- Webinars and online classes : (future) Monetize coaching-style webinars and online classes covering specialty baking tips and techniques
- Members-only content : (future) Monetize a members-only section of the website for specialty content to complement webinars and online classes
- Franchise : (future) Monetize a specialty cottage bakery concept and sell to franchise entrepreneurs
Sales Channels
Sales channels put your revenue streams into action. This section also answers the “where will this happen” question in the second bullet of your vision.
The product sales channels for our cottage bakery example can include:
- Mobile point-of-sale (POS) : A mobile platform such as Shopify or Square POS for managing in-person sales at local farmers’ markets, fairs and festivals
- E-commerce platform : An online store such as Shopify, Square or WooCommerce for online retail sales and wholesale sales orders
- Social media channels : Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest shoppable posts and pins for online sales via social media channels
- Brick-and-mortar location : For in-store sales , once the business has grown to a point that it can support a physical location
Channels that support other income streams might include:
- Affiliate income : Blog section on the e-commerce website and affiliate partner accounts
- Advertising income : Reserved advertising spaces on the e-commerce website
- E-book sales : Amazon e-book sales via Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing
- Video income : YouTube channel with ad monetization
- Webinars and online classes : Online class and webinar platforms that support member accounts, recordings and playback
- Members-only content : Password-protected website content using membership apps such as MemberPress
Nowadays, the line between marketing and sales channels is blurred. Social media outlets, e-books, websites, blogs and videos serve as both marketing tools and income opportunities. Since most are free and those with advertising options are extremely economical, these are ideal marketing outlets for lean startups.
However, many businesses still find value in traditional advertising such as local radio, television, direct mail, newspapers and magazines. You can include these advertising costs in your simple business plan template to help build a marketing plan and budget.
5. Structure, Suppliers and Operations
This section of your simple business plan template explores how to structure and operate your business. Details include the type of business organization your startup will take, roles and responsibilities, supplier logistics and day-to-day operations. Also, include any certifications or permits needed to launch your enterprise in this section.
Our cottage baker example might use a structure and startup plan such as this:
- Business structure : Sole proprietorship with a “doing business as” (DBA) .
- Permits and certifications : County-issued food handling permit and state cottage food certification for home-based food production. Option, check into certified commercial kitchen rentals.
- Roles and responsibilities : Solopreneur, all roles and responsibilities with the owner.
- Supply chain : Bulk ingredients and food packaging via Sam’s Club, Costco, Amazon Prime with annual membership costs. Uline for shipping supplies; no membership needed.
- Day-to-day operations : Source ingredients and bake three days per week to fulfill local and online orders. Reserve time for specialty sales, wholesale partner orders and market events as needed. Ship online orders on alternating days. Update website and create marketing and affiliate blog posts on non-shipping days.
6. Financial Forecasts
Your final task is to list forecasted business startup and ongoing costs and profit projections in your simple business plan template. Thanks to free business tools such as Square and free marketing on social media, lean startups can launch with few upfront costs. In many cases, cost of goods, shipping and packaging, business permits and printing for business cards are your only out-of-pocket expenses.
Cost Forecast
Our cottage baker’s forecasted lean startup costs might include:
Gross Profit Projections
This helps you determine the retail prices and sales volume required to keep your business running and, hopefully, earn income for yourself. Use product research to spot target retail prices for your goods, then subtract your cost of goods, such as hourly rate, raw goods and supplier costs. The total amount is your gross profit per item or service.
Here are some examples of projected gross profits for our cottage baker:
Bottom Line
Putting careful thought and detail in a business plan is always beneficial, but don’t get so bogged down in planning that you never hit the start button to launch your business . Also, remember that business plans aren’t set in stone. Markets, audiences and technologies change, and so will your goals and means of achieving them. Think of your business plan as a living document and regularly revisit, expand and restructure it as market opportunities and business growth demand.
Is there a template for a business plan?
Yes, you can copy our free business plan template and fill in the blanks or customize it in Google Docs, Microsoft Word or another word processing app. This free business plan template includes the six key elements that any entrepreneur needs to consider when launching a new business.
What does a simple business plan include?
A simple business plan is a one- to two-page overview covering six key elements that any budding entrepreneur needs to consider when launching a startup. These include your vision or mission, product or service offering, target audience, revenue streams and sales channels, structure and operations, and financial forecasts.
How can I create a free business plan template?
Start with this free simple business plan template that covers the six essential elements of a startup. Once downloaded, you can edit this document in Google Docs or another word processing app and add new sections or subsections to your plan template to meet your specific business plan needs.
What basic items should be included in a business plan?
When writing out a business plan, you want to make sure that you cover everything related to your concept for the business, an analysis of the industry―including potential customers and an overview of the market for your goods or services―how you plan to execute your vision for the business, how you plan to grow the business if it becomes successful and all financial data around the business, including current cash on hand, potential investors and budget plans for the next few years.
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Business plan templates
From competitive analysis to financial projections, business plans give your new business a roadmap for success. Download one of our free business plan templates and take your company to the next level.
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Startup Business Plan Template
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Business Plan Template
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What is a business plan?
A business plan is a document that helps small business owners determine the viability of their business idea. Combining market research and financial analysis, a professional business plan helps startup CEOs and potential investors determine if the company can compete in the target market.
Typically, a good business plan consists of the following:
- Executive summary
- Company description
- Mission statement
- Product and services
- Marketing plan
- Operations plan
- Management organization
- Financial plan
- Conclusion & appendix
Every section involved in a business plan is designed to help startup businesses reach their target market.
A business plan asks founders and entrepreneurs to detail their business strategy in a step-by-step process that makes sense from an operational perspective. This is essential if a startup is seeking a business loan or an investment from a venture capital firm.
However, even small businesses that are already economically viable can benefit from creating a business plan, since it encourages business owners and their management teams to examine their business model and reevaluate the best ways to reach their target customers.
Should I use a business plan template?
Yes. If you’ve never written one, a business plan can be challenging to write.
Creating a successful plan that you can use to grow your small business can require weeks of market analysis and financial preparation. You may spend time using Microsoft Excel or Powerpoint in order to create documentation which better supports our operational decisions.
However, almost every professional business plan is structured in the same way and most ask for the same information. Because of this, using a business plan template is advisable to save time, money, and effort.
Business plan templates for free
Rather than spending time trying to figure out how to write a business plan , use a free template as a guide to completion.
Business plan templates from PandaDoc can help you reach an effective go-to-market strategy even faster by asking you to provide all the relevant information you need when creating an effective business plan.
Grab a free template to get started!
Frequently asked questions
How many pages should my business plan be.
This depends on the kind of business plan you need to write and how you intend to use the plan that you create.
For example, a plan for a small business seeking potential investors or a business loan will need to provide income statements, cash flow statements, and a balance sheet (usually for a three-year or five-year forecast period).
These financial statements can be omitted if a small business owner isn’t seeking funding and is instead planning to use their business plan as a guiding document for themselves and their management team members.
Some business plans may only run a few pages. Fully-developed business plans can be as long as 50 pages. Much of this depends on the type of business, the operational strategy, and the level of detail that goes into developing the business plan.
Who needs a business plan?
Every business should have a business plan. This is an essential guidance document for any founder or CEO.
Good business plans help a company determine the viability of its place in the market and can help the business develop better strategies for differentiating itself from its competitors.
Business planning also forces business owners to evaluate their marketing strategy, the cost of customer acquisition and retention, and how they plan to grow their business over time.
What is the best business plan template?
Business plans come in all shapes and sizes. The best business plan template for your business is one that you understand and that matches the size and legal structure of your operation.
If you’re a sole proprietor, a business plan template designed for a big corporation probably doesn’t make sense. However, a business plan that helps you build an effective roadmap to grow your business while protecting your intellectual property is a good starting point.
PandaDoc offers specialized business plan templates for common industries along with tips to help you get started with business planning.
Should I hire someone to write my business plan for me?
No. You’ll find freelance writers and business strategy companies out there who are happy to write your business plan for a fee. These resources can guide you through the process, but you should write (or be heavily involved in) the creation of your business plan.
The reason for this is simple: You know the most about your business, and your business needs you to succeed.
A writer can work with you to make your business plan sound better to investors, and a consultant can help you fill in knowledge gaps — like how to conduct a SWOT analysis — and point out weaknesses in your plan. But, at the end of the day, you need to use the business plan to pitch investors and run your business.
Those ideas and guiding principles aren’t something you can outsource.
Should I use business planning software?
Software isn’t required when creating an effective business plan. Most business planning software is designed to help you navigate the outlining and writing process more effectively.
You don’t need software to write a professional business plan, but a solid template can help you get started. Download a free template from PandaDoc today and take your business to the next level.
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Web Design Business Plan
Are you thinking of starting a web design services We have prepared a solid web design business plan sample that guides you on every stage of your business plan writing
If you are planning to start a new web design company, the first thing you will need is a business plan. Use our sample Robid – Web Design Business Plan created using upmetrics business plan software to start writing your business plan in no time.
Before you start writing your business plan for your new web design firm, spend as much time as you can reading through some examples of the software and mobile app-related business plans.
Reading sample business plans will give you a good idea of what you’re aiming for and also it will show you the different sections that different entrepreneurs include and the language they use to write about themselves and their business plans.
We have created this sample Robid – Web Design Business Plan for you to get a good idea about how a perfect web design business plan should look like and what details you will need to include in your stunning business plan.
Web Design Business Plan Outline
This is the standard web design business plan outline which will cover all important sections that you should include in your business plan.
- Business Overview
- Keys to Success
- 3 Year Profit Forecast
- Company Ownership
- Start-up Summary
- Startup Cost
- Funding Required
- Existing Services
- Service Description
- Sales Literature
- Fulfillment
- Future Services
- Target Market Segment Strategy
- Market Trends
- Market Growth
- Service Business Analysis
- Business Participants
- Market Segmentation
- Competitive Advantage
- Marketing Strategy
- Marketing Programs
- Pricing Strategy
- Promotion Strategy
- Sales Strategy
- Strategic Alliances
- Organizational Structure
- Management Team Gaps
- Personnel Plan
- Important Assumptions
- Brake-even Analysis
- Profit Yearly
- Gross Margin Yearly
- Projected Cash Flow
- Projected Balance Sheet
- Business Ratios
After getting started with upmetrics , you can copy this sample business plan into your business plan and modify the required information and download your web design business plan pdf and doc file . It’s the fastest and easiest way to start writing your business plan.
Business Planning Resources
We have plenty of free business planning resources available to help you with your planning. You can download our resources to learn all about business planning.
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8 best business plan templates (and what to include in your own)
This post was originally published on Feb. 6, 2018, and was updated on July 22, 2019.
Writing a business plan isn’t the most glamorous part of starting a new business, but it’s extremely important. To help you save time and eliminate stress, you can access some of the best business plan templates online. Some are available to use at no cost, while others require a nominal subscription fee.
Whether you are pitching investors for a funding round, applying for a traditional small business loan , or self-funding, you need a rock-solid business plan to lay out your vision and map out the steps required to create a successful business.
A business plan also acts as a guide, which you constantly turn to during the early growth stages as well as day-to-day operations.
Related: Big collection of resources for starting a business
8 best business plan templates
Many entrepreneurs don’t know where to start when it comes to creating a business plan, which is why a template is a great option. They offer structure and guidance, while remaining 100-percent customizable. With the help of some small business owners, I have put together a list of the best business plan templates available to download.
- U.S. Small Business Administration business plan (free).
- Slideshop Business Pitch template (subscription).
- Slideshop Visionary Pitch template (subscription).
- Rocket Lawyer state-specific templates (free).
- SCORE startup business plan template (free).
- Microsoft business plan templates (free).
- Slideshop Business Strategy presentation template (subscription).
- LawDepot free business plan depot (free).
So if you’re ready to get serious about your business and learn about what to include in a business plan, then keep reading.
Related: Using a Lean Canvas to create a business plan
1. U.S. Small Business Administration business plan builder
The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has one of the best business plan templates available, and it is very thorough — which you would expect from one of the most trusted and respected small business resources.
“The thing I like best about this free business plan template is the fact that it lets you go back in and edit as needed, so you don’t have to have all of the information in front of you the first time you set out to tackle the task. Creating a well thought-out business plan requires research and planning, so the edit option comes in very handy. The end result is a very professional looking business plan.” ~ John Fitch, Founder, The Fitch Law Firm
You don’t want to rush your business plan — take time to perform proper research, and then go back to edit and complete each section when you are ready. You can access the SBA business plan template here .
2. Slideshop Business Pitch template
“Send me your pitch.” Ahhh … four magic words entrepreneurs everywhere long to hear.
This beautifully designed Business Pitch template , vetted by savvy investors who’ve said YES and NO to thousands of pitch offers, will increase your chances of investors asking to see your pitch.
Telling the story of your opportunity from problem / solution to testimonials and financial requirements, the business pitch presentation has 19 easy-to-edit slides, along with pro designer tips for working with the financial tables and other graphics.
Get prospective investors, board members, business partners and clients excited, engaged and invested by honing in on the problem right away and then following up with your unique solution, and the story of your unique differentiation and position in the market.
The Business Pitch deck includes slides that allow you to quickly and visually:
- Outline the problem and your proposed solution
- Share facts and figures about your target market
- Describe your product
- Outline your business model
- Illustrate the competitive landscape and your place in it
- Propose a timeline and product roadmap
- Introduce your team
- Detail financial requirements
Use the deck as a standalone pitch by sending as a pdf, or as a support tool as you share your opportunity live, in the office or on the road.
3. Slideshop Visionary Pitch template
The dynamic Visionary Pitch deck is designed to communicate big business ideas — the whys and hows of a new business model.
You’ll find slides for:
- Mission statement/vision
- Market overview
- Hero quotes
- Trends focus and important stat callouts
- Growth chart
- Target audience versus current audience
- Competitive analysis
- Version comparison
- General notes and takeaways
- Upcoming priorities
- Team overview
- Thank you/contact info
This 21-slide template helps you define and present your market, your competition, and the future roadmap. The deck visually supports the pitch story you’ve worked so hard to craft.
Related: How to write a mission statement you’ll be proud to share
4. Rocket Lawyer state-specific templates
Do you know what to include in a business plan, especially when it comes to your specific state? If not, don’t worry. Rocket Lawyer has created a standout the best business plan templates, which walks you through the entire process of building a business plan that meets the financing requirements in the state where you are seeking funding.
“Many new business owners aren’t aware of the lending requirements as they pertain to the state in which they will be based out of. The online tool from Rocket Lawyer is very helpful, especially for those that need a business plan specifically for securing funding.” ~ Xavier Morales, Founder, Secure Your Trademark
If you plan on approaching lenders to fund your business, there is nothing worse than going in unprepared.
By presenting a potential lender with a business plan that meets your state requirements, you show that you have done your research — and this shows the financial institution that you are serious. You can select your state and start building your business plan using Rocket Lawyer’s template here .
Related: Collection of resources for funding a business
5. SCORE startup business plan template
As one of the leading nonprofit organization devoted to helping business owners succeed, SCORE has created one of the best business plan templates because it is in-depth and customizable. It’s available in PDF or Microsoft Word format here .
“There are a lot of free business plan templates available online, but very few are as well structured as the offering from SCORE. There are 150 questions to answer, all designed to help you create the best business plan for your specific situation. I highly recommend this template, especially if it’s your first time writing a business plan.” ~ Stefan Gleason, President, Money Metals Exchange
SCORE also provides a resource they refer to as Refining the Plan , which is designed to assist first-timers writing an effective business plan.
6. Microsoft business plan templates
Most of the best business plan templates available online create a very plain business plan in Word or PDF format. While they have all the important information, they tend to be lacking visually. Microsoft has a library of pre-created business plans in PowerPoint format that you can access here .
“You don’t have to go overboard with an over-the-top design, but it’s very important to at the very least incorporate your company’s branding into your business plan. This little extra effort can go a long way, giving you a much more professional presentatioN.” ~ Michael Washburn, President, High Purity Northwest Inc
Starting with a blank PowerPoint slide can be very difficult, especially for those who don’t have a design background. ( Here’s a great roundup of tips for creating presentations with PowerPoint .) The business plan templates offered by Microsoft allow you to begin with eye-appealing layouts that can be customized to match your brand.
Editor’s note: Get PowerPoint and other proven Microsoft Office products with Microsoft Office 365 from GoDaddy . Plans are simple to set up and include GoDaddy’s award-winning 24/7 support.
7. Slideshop Business Strategy presentation deck
This Business Strategy presentation template could be a cornerstone for all business leaders. This deck will help you clearly present on the following:
- Project timelines
- Data visualization
- Project checklists
- Business models
This presentation template also includes Designer Pro Tips that will help you add a new photo to the background and customize chart data for better visualization. You’ll also get two slides with supplemental charts.
Related: Dream It — 33 tips to move you from idea to action
8. LawDepot free business plan builder
As Andrew Hedreen of Strasser Woodenworks explains:
“A lot of business plan templates aren’t thorough enough to satisfy the questions investors and lenders will have. LawDepot offers a template that dives into marketing, SWOT (the internal strengths and weaknesses of your organizational structure), product/service research and competitive analysis. These are all necessary components that not all free templates cover.”
The user experience sets the LawDepot business plan template apart from the best business plan templates, with simple input fields and a nice preview option that lets you watch the progress.
There are also several industries to select from as a base, giving you a template that is specifically tailored to your needs.
In order to download the business plan created, you will have to sign up for a trial subscription, but that can be cancelled if you don’t plan on using the service.
The best business plan templates show you what to include
Creating a plan from scratch can be overwhelming, especially if you aren’t 100-percent sure what to include in a business plan. Fortunately, the best templates make it easy by giving you structure and guidance, indicating what information should go where.
But just for quick reference, your business plan should include:
- Your business concept. Tell everyone what you’re about, why you’re in business and how you’re going to succeed.
- Your products or service. This is your chance to outline what makes your company special. How will you differ from the competition? What pain points do your products/services solve for?
- Your overarching strategy. It’s great to identify what you want to do, but it’s vital to note how you’re going to accomplish it. What key personnel will be involved? What’s your go-to market strategy? Who are you going to target? What actionable goals do you have in mind?
- Financial information. Every business needs funding. Don’t forget to incorporate the all-important dollar amounts .
Avoid unnecessary stress, and check out the best business plan templates provided above. One of them is sure to satisfy your needs and help you create an effective business plan.
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Business Plan Example and Template
Learn how to create a business plan
What is a Business Plan?
A business plan is a document that contains the operational and financial plan of a business, and details how its objectives will be achieved. It serves as a road map for the business and can be used when pitching investors or financial institutions for debt or equity financing .
A business plan should follow a standard format and contain all the important business plan elements. Typically, it should present whatever information an investor or financial institution expects to see before providing financing to a business.
Contents of a Business Plan
A business plan should be structured in a way that it contains all the important information that investors are looking for. Here are the main sections of a business plan:
1. Title Page
The title page captures the legal information of the business, which includes the registered business name, physical address, phone number, email address, date, and the company logo.
2. Executive Summary
The executive summary is the most important section because it is the first section that investors and bankers see when they open the business plan. It provides a summary of the entire business plan. It should be written last to ensure that you don’t leave any details out. It must be short and to the point, and it should capture the reader’s attention. The executive summary should not exceed two pages.
3. Industry Overview
The industry overview section provides information about the specific industry that the business operates in. Some of the information provided in this section includes major competitors, industry trends, and estimated revenues. It also shows the company’s position in the industry and how it will compete in the market against other major players.
4. Market Analysis and Competition
The market analysis section details the target market for the company’s product offerings. This section confirms that the company understands the market and that it has already analyzed the existing market to determine that there is adequate demand to support its proposed business model.
Market analysis includes information about the target market’s demographics , geographical location, consumer behavior, and market needs. The company can present numbers and sources to give an overview of the target market size.
A business can choose to consolidate the market analysis and competition analysis into one section or present them as two separate sections.
5. Sales and Marketing Plan
The sales and marketing plan details how the company plans to sell its products to the target market. It attempts to present the business’s unique selling proposition and the channels it will use to sell its goods and services. It details the company’s advertising and promotion activities, pricing strategy, sales and distribution methods, and after-sales support.
6. Management Plan
The management plan provides an outline of the company’s legal structure, its management team, and internal and external human resource requirements. It should list the number of employees that will be needed and the remuneration to be paid to each of the employees.
Any external professionals, such as lawyers, valuers, architects, and consultants, that the company will need should also be included. If the company intends to use the business plan to source funding from investors, it should list the members of the executive team, as well as the members of the advisory board.
7. Operating Plan
The operating plan provides an overview of the company’s physical requirements, such as office space, machinery, labor, supplies, and inventory . For a business that requires custom warehouses and specialized equipment, the operating plan will be more detailed, as compared to, say, a home-based consulting business. If the business plan is for a manufacturing company, it will include information on raw material requirements and the supply chain.
8. Financial Plan
The financial plan is an important section that will often determine whether the business will obtain required financing from financial institutions, investors, or venture capitalists. It should demonstrate that the proposed business is viable and will return enough revenues to be able to meet its financial obligations. Some of the information contained in the financial plan includes a projected income statement , balance sheet, and cash flow.
9. Appendices and Exhibits
The appendices and exhibits part is the last section of a business plan. It includes any additional information that banks and investors may be interested in or that adds credibility to the business. Some of the information that may be included in the appendices section includes office/building plans, detailed market research , products/services offering information, marketing brochures, and credit histories of the promoters.
Business Plan Template
Here is a basic template that any business can use when developing its business plan:
Section 1: Executive Summary
- Present the company’s mission.
- Describe the company’s product and/or service offerings.
- Give a summary of the target market and its demographics.
- Summarize the industry competition and how the company will capture a share of the available market.
- Give a summary of the operational plan, such as inventory, office and labor, and equipment requirements.
Section 2: Industry Overview
- Describe the company’s position in the industry.
- Describe the existing competition and the major players in the industry.
- Provide information about the industry that the business will operate in, estimated revenues, industry trends, government influences, as well as the demographics of the target market.
Section 3: Market Analysis and Competition
- Define your target market, their needs, and their geographical location.
- Describe the size of the market, the units of the company’s products that potential customers may buy, and the market changes that may occur due to overall economic changes.
- Give an overview of the estimated sales volume vis-à-vis what competitors sell.
- Give a plan on how the company plans to combat the existing competition to gain and retain market share.
Section 4: Sales and Marketing Plan
- Describe the products that the company will offer for sale and its unique selling proposition.
- List the different advertising platforms that the business will use to get its message to customers.
- Describe how the business plans to price its products in a way that allows it to make a profit.
- Give details on how the company’s products will be distributed to the target market and the shipping method.
Section 5: Management Plan
- Describe the organizational structure of the company.
- List the owners of the company and their ownership percentages.
- List the key executives, their roles, and remuneration.
- List any internal and external professionals that the company plans to hire, and how they will be compensated.
- Include a list of the members of the advisory board, if available.
Section 6: Operating Plan
- Describe the location of the business, including office and warehouse requirements.
- Describe the labor requirement of the company. Outline the number of staff that the company needs, their roles, skills training needed, and employee tenures (full-time or part-time).
- Describe the manufacturing process, and the time it will take to produce one unit of a product.
- Describe the equipment and machinery requirements, and if the company will lease or purchase equipment and machinery, and the related costs that the company estimates it will incur.
- Provide a list of raw material requirements, how they will be sourced, and the main suppliers that will supply the required inputs.
Section 7: Financial Plan
- Describe the financial projections of the company, by including the projected income statement, projected cash flow statement, and the balance sheet projection.
Section 8: Appendices and Exhibits
- Quotes of building and machinery leases
- Proposed office and warehouse plan
- Market research and a summary of the target market
- Credit information of the owners
- List of product and/or services
Related Readings
Thank you for reading CFI’s guide to Business Plans. To keep learning and advancing your career, the following CFI resources will be helpful:
- Corporate Structure
- Three Financial Statements
- NEW CFI Template Marketplace
- See all management & strategy resources
- Share this article
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Educational Website Business Plan
Start your own educational website business plan
One Week At A Time
Executive summary executive summary is a brief introduction to your business plan. it describes your business, the problem that it solves, your target market, and financial highlights.">.
One Week At A Time is a website business based in Lexington, Kentucky that is owned and operated by Frank Williams. The website aims to educate people on how they can help the Earth and lessen their environmental impact by accomplishing one task each week for 52 weeks. The tasks are simple and will show people how easily they can make small changes in their life to make a difference in their world. The revenue stream for this website will come from commissions on recommendations of Earth-friendly products that fit with our weekly tips. We will have affiliate relationships with retailers providing these products so we won’t be producing them or carrying inventory, just earning commission on each sale.
Our financial strategy is based on staying profitable while keeping expenses extremely low. We plan on using profits to support environmental causes we believe in, so it’s not our mission to earn as much money as humanly possible. We’re more concerned with keeping the cash flow and cash balance positive. The accompanying chart highlights our financial plans.
In order to reach our goals, we must complete the following keys of success:
- We must develop quality content in the form of our tips which engage the readers, empower them, and inspire them to share the tips with others, and so, grow our user base.
- We must execute our marketing plan well, since the focus is on not spending money, while maximizing our online exposure.
- We must keep our expenses low. We don’t plan on generating a large amount of revenue in the near-term, so we can’t let expenses get out of control.
- We must pre-sell our product recommendations in order to get users to purchase through our site, thereby garnering our commissions.
1.1 Mission
One Week At A Time is an educational website that teaches busy people how they can help the environment by accomplishing simple weekly tasks over the period of one year. We hope to help people become more environmentally conscious, help retailers sell Earth-friendly products, and use our commissions to pay our expenses and contribute profits to environmental causes.
1.2 Objectives
- Use simple weekly tasks to teach people how they can help the environment and lessen their personal environmental impact.
- To sign up 5,000 subscribers to our weekly environmental tips list at the end of the first year.
- To receive 10,000 visitors per month to our website.
- To achieve profitability within six months.
- To use all company profits to contribute to environmental organizations and causes.
1.3 Keys to Success
- Quality Content: Write good weekly tips which are simply written, friendly, to the point, and inspire people to accomplish their weekly task.
- Marketing: Focus on link-building, search engine optimization, and word of mouth to spread the word about our website and email tips.
- Expenses: Keep other expenses low to make achieving profitability easier. There is no need to spend a lot of money in order to accomplish our goals quicker.
- Promote and pre-sell Earth-friendly products in a way that inspires our users to buy using our site’s links so we receive our commissions.
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Website Business Plan Template
Download this website business plan template design in word, google docs, apple pages format. easily editable, printable, downloadable..
Are you planning to determine what mix of products and services you will be offering through your website? Formulate a business plan to get more investments and market your products and services to a global audience of potential customers by using our Website Business Plan Template. This ready-made file is crucial to develop an effective business plan before taking that big step to become successful, as well as being prepared for things that may happen along the way. Strategize your move through market analysis and customer research with the aid of this template. Available in A4 and US print sizes. Download today!
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10 of the Best Business Plan Examples for 2022 - With Templates
Download Now: Free Business Plan Template
The first step of being a business owner and creating a company is to develop a comprehensive business plan. We aren’t talking about your doodles of growth that you scribbled on a napkin or thought about while mowing the lawn, but an actual written out plan to build on. A business plan that outlines how it will operate, as well as what overarching goals will guide its growth in the future. Building one from the ground up requires focus, patience, and careful foresight. What’s more, those that are well-crafted should provide a thorough summary of the products or services you intend to sell, the demographic you’re targeting, and your expected profit margins. This may also include benchmarks you hope to meet along with the estimated timelines to achieve these goals.
Putting together a good business plan now will be a foundational piece for you to refer back to during challenging times and to build on when you are growing. Additionally, an attractive and complete business plan can help to grow your business with money from a bank or an outside investor and to better reach your target market.
In this article, we’ll review some key components to any successful business plan to help you create a detailed model of your company. We’ll also examine a few sample business plans that can take a lot of guesswork out of the equation.
What is a Business Plan ?
A business plan can help shape who you are and how you grow
A business plan is a written summary of how you want to run your company and what goals you have to help you get there. While banks and other potential investors in your business rely on reviewing them to decide whether they want to give you money for growth or not, they can also help the owners of a company define their vision and objectives. While their contents vary with some people preferring to do a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats), they typically include the following 4 sections.
Business Plan Executive Summary
The cornerstone of any business plan is an executive summary section that touches on the basics of your company. Essentially, it explains what products or services you will provide, the customers your company will serve, and the overall goals of your business. This is the first thing anyone you decide to share it with will see, so take your time to make this section truly engaging and unique.
Ideal Customers and Competition
This section is used to clearly describe how your products or services will fulfill the needs of a specific customer and community. Go into detail regarding how the business you are focusing on has changed over time and what unique offering sets your business apart. Other information included here should cover your projected market share and the kind of competition you expect to face. Explain what makes your business different from others in your industry and why customers will choose your products or services instead of someone else's.
You can also include a market analysis in this part to really understand what you are up against when it comes to getting new customers and growing your business with your marketing plan and financial plan.
Marketing Plan
Marketing strategy is a key piece of any business plan
Here, you’ll want to decide how you intend to reach your customers through social media, content marketing, advertising, and other forms of marketing. The marketing section of your business plan should have clear, achievable goals. Depending on your current size of business, those could be as simple as getting a website up all the way down to how much web traffic and leads you want each month. goals This portion is also an excellent place to examine marketing trends in your business area, including examples of brands you may want to become, or how you want to talk with your customers in your marketing.
A marketing plan should include several pieces of marketing strategy including;
Google My Business Profile
Your Google My Business profile is where you highlight how to find your company and what you do. It will show up in the Google search engine when people look for services like yours. It will also be where people will see Google reviews of your business. It's important to keep your Google My Business up to date and to always be responding to reviews. Having a good customer experience as a part of your business plan will ensure that people see your business is trustworthy and worth calling.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
A long-term investment for your marketing plan is SEO . Chances are high you have either heard of SEO from someone or are already investing money here. It can definitely feel like a black box at times, mostly because it doesn't usually show immediate leads or revenue. At the heart of SEO strategy is continually creating content for a blog on your website or adding pages to your website that are focused around keywords that people search for. It can be complicated and take some time, so worth looking at partners like Scorpion to help you with SEO.
Website Management
Your website is the center of your marketing for your business plan. Its important to have the right website management plan to keep things moving in the right direction. At a bare minimum you should have a nice website design and have multiple ways that people can contact you. There are also great tools like livechat and online scheduling that may be worth investing in.
Paid Advertising
There are a lot of places that you can invest time in paid advertising for your business plan. It can also be a key source of immediate lead generation for your business. It can definitely be complicated. If you want to learn more about strategies for paid advertising, check out this paid advertising guide that you can bring into your business plan.
Financial Summary
Another important piece of any business plan is a thorough financial summary of all expenses and income related to your company. If you are an existing business you may already be tracking a lot of this information and can write down some of this. If you are a new business than it may be broken into money you have personally, from family/friends, or from a bank to start your business and how you expect to spend that to grow. The financial portion is especially relevant for banks or other people who may want to invest money to help grow your business. If you have an existing business and are looking to grow, potential banks or investors will look at several key areas in your financial summary, including:
- Projected income
- Projected expenses
- Debt-to-income ratio
- Money coming in
- Desired form of financing (bank, outside investor, family/friends)
- Income statement
- Financial forecast
- Cash flow statements
Many business plans divide these 4 sections into further-defined categories that cover topics of interest like business structure, market opportunity, or long-term objectives. The plan will change depending on your business and goals. Once it’s completed, it should create a definitive picture of your company from top to bottom, leaving very little up to the imagination.
How to Build a Successful Business Plan
Before you get started on your own business plan, let's go over a couple of tips on how to build a business plan that sets your company up for success. Remember that the goal of your business plan is usually to secure funding and come up with the strategy necessary to get started.
The main thing investors will do is look for holes in your plan. They want a bulletproof plan for success (or as bulletproof as it can get). This means you need to be as detailed as possible . Answer any questions an investor might have. Look at every area that could fail and come up with different plans and strategies for how your business would survive. The main goal is to have a solid foundation for operating your business.
Next, be sure you address your unique value proposition . Why is your company different than competitors? How will you position your brand in the industry? If you don't know your target audience and why people will buy from you instead of a competitor, then your business plan won't be successful.
Your business plan will explain why your business is a good idea both strategically in the industry and financially. The goal is to legitimize your company before getting started.
To save time with your business plan, it may help to use a template from various online sources. Many are available online that allow you to create what you want with minimal effort. Here are 11 of the best examples for 2021.
Business Plan Samples and Templates
Using a business plan template can help you do more
It can be overwhelming to think of building a plan from scratch. Thankfully, You can find several ready-made templates for restaurants, repair stores, bars, and hotels at the Business Plan Shop. They’re simple and easy to customize to your liking as well. Once completed, you can download them to a Word document or PDF file. While these templates are available free of charge during a 7-day trial period, the website requires a subscription fee for continued use.
1. Upmetrics' Sample Business Plans
2. Simple Business Plan Example by Venngage
3. SBA’s Business Plan Outline
4. Score’s Business Plan Template for Startups
5. Complete Guide to Writing a Business Plan by Review42
6. Step-by-Step Business Plan Creator by LawDepot
7. Growthink’s Business Plan Template
8. Business Plan Template by Jotform
9. PandaDoc’s Business Plan Template
10. Single-Page Business Plan Template by HubSpot
Another valuable and free resource for small businesses is HubSpot, a helpful website where you can find templates like this simple one-page business plan. They include easy-to-follow instructions in each section. Once you’re done, simply download the document to a Word document or PDF file. This template also makes it easy to add your own unique touch with logos or brand-specific images.
BONUS: Scorpion
If you’re struggling to write the perfect business plan, our experienced team at Scorpion can help. We will work with you to create the perfect business plan to reach your target customer. We have considerable experience providing top-tier marketing solutions for law firms , franchises, healthcare providers, and even home services . Our team and technology will help you create a plan and produce the marketing to create growth for your business. Contact us today to learn more about how Scorpion can help your business thrive.
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Free Printable Communication Plan Template [Master Your Communication Strategy]
A communication plan is a crucial element of any project, event, or organization. It outlines the strategies and methods for effectively communicating with stakeholders, including employees, customers, partners, and the public. By developing a clear and comprehensive communication plan , organizations can ensure that all parties are informed, engaged, and on the same page.
The plan includes the goals and objectives of the communication, the target audience, the channels of communication, and the frequency and timing of communication. A well-designed communication plan helps to promote transparency, build trust, and enhance relationships, ultimately leading to greater success in achieving the goals of the organization.
Table of Contents
Importance of Communication Plan
The importance of a communication plan lies in its ability to facilitate effective and efficient communication between an organization and its stakeholders . A communication plan serves as a blueprint for ensuring that all parties are informed and involved in the process, reducing confusion and misunderstandings.
A well-designed communication plan helps to:
Clarify goals and objectives: By outlining the objectives of communication, a communication plan helps to keep everyone focused and working towards the same end goal.
Reach the target audience: A communication plan helps to identify the target audience and the best ways to reach them, ensuring that the message is delivered effectively.
Promote transparency: A communication plan helps to build transparency and trust between the organization and its stakeholders, by providing clear and consistent information.
Enhance relationships: By providing regular and meaningful communication, a communication plan helps to enhance relationships between the organization and its stakeholders, fostering a sense of community and shared purpose.
Streamline processes: A communication plan helps to streamline communication processes and eliminate redundancies, reducing waste and improving efficiency.
What should a communication plan include?
A communication plan should include the following elements:
Goals and Objectives: Outline the objectives of the communication, including what information you want to convey, what actions you hope to inspire, and what outcomes you hope to achieve.
Target Audience: Identify the stakeholders who will receive the information and what their needs and interests are.
Channels of Communication: Determine the best methods for reaching the target audience, including face-to-face meetings, phone calls, emails, newsletters, social media, and other forms of digital and print communication.
Message: Develop a clear and concise message that will resonate with the target audience and achieve the goals of the communication.
Frequency and Timing: Determine how often and when the communication will take place, taking into account the target audience’s schedule, interests, and attention span.
Responsibilities: Assign roles and responsibilities for managing the communication, including who will develop the message, who will be responsible for distribution, and who will monitor the results.
Evaluation: Plan for evaluating the effectiveness of the communication plan and determining whether the goals and objectives were met.
Budget: Allocate resources, including time, money, and personnel, to ensure the communication plan can be executed effectively.
Types of communication plan
There are several types of communication plans, including:
Project Communication Plan: A project communication plan outlines the strategies and methods for communicating with stakeholders during the lifecycle of a project. It helps to ensure that everyone is informed and involved in the project, and that all objectives are met.
Crisis Communication Plan: A crisis communication plan outlines the strategies and methods for communicating with stakeholders during a crisis or emergency situation. It helps to ensure that all parties receive accurate and timely information, and that the organization’s reputation is protected.
Internal Communication Plan: An internal communication plan outlines the strategies and methods for communicating with employees, volunteers, or other internal stakeholders. It helps to ensure that everyone is informed and engaged, and that all objectives are met.
External Communication Plan: An external communication plan outlines the strategies and methods for communicating with customers, partners, or other external stakeholders. It helps to ensure that everyone is informed and engaged, and that all objectives are met.
Marketing Communication Plan: A marketing communication plan outlines the strategies and methods for communicating with customers and other target audiences to promote a product, service, or brand. It helps to ensure that the marketing message is delivered effectively and efficiently.
Stakeholder Communication Plan: A stakeholder communication plan outlines the strategies and methods for communicating with stakeholders to ensure that everyone is informed and involved in the process, and that all objectives are met.
How to make a communications plan
A well-designed communication plan is essential for ensuring that all parties are informed and engaged, and that all objectives are met. Here is a step-by-step guide to help you create an effective communication plan:
Define Your Goals and Objectives
Start by defining the objectives of your communication plan. What information do you want to convey? What actions do you hope to inspire? What outcomes do you hope to achieve?
Identify Your Target Audience
Next, identify the stakeholders who will receive the information, including customers, employees, partners, or other target groups. Consider what their needs and interests are, and how you can best reach them.
Choose Your Channels of Communication
Determine the best methods for reaching your target audience, including face-to-face meetings, phone calls, emails, newsletters, social media, and other forms of digital and print communication.
Develop Your Message
Create a clear and concise message that will resonate with your target audience and achieve the goals of your communication. Consider what information is most important, what benefits your audience will receive, and what motivates them to take action.
Determine Frequency and Timing
Decide how often and when the communication will take place, taking into account the target audience’s schedule, interests, and attention span.
Assign Responsibilities
Assign roles and responsibilities for managing the communication, including who will develop the message, who will be responsible for distribution, and who will monitor the results.
Plan for Evaluation
Develop a plan for evaluating the effectiveness of your communication plan and determining whether the goals and objectives were met.
Allocate Resources
Allocate resources, including time, money, and personnel, to ensure your communication plan can be executed effectively.
Implement and Monitor
Finally, implement your communication plan and monitor its progress. Make changes as needed to ensure that it is effective and efficient, and that all goals and objectives are met.
Example communication plan
Here is an example communication plan:
Goals and Objectives:
- Introduce a new product to the market
- Increase brand awareness among target audience
- Encourage product adoption and usage
Target Audience:
- Current customers
- Prospective customers
- Industry influencers
Channels of Communication:
- Email marketing
- Social media advertising
- Product demonstrations
- Influencer partnerships
- Highlight the benefits and unique features of the new product
- Emphasize the ease of use and value it brings to customers
- Showcase customer success stories
Frequency and Timing:
- Email marketing – bi-weekly for the first month, then monthly for 6 months
- Social media advertising – daily for the first week, then weekly for the first month
- Product demonstrations – scheduled on a monthly basis for the first 6 months
- Influencer partnerships – activated in the first month and ongoing for 6 months
Responsibilities:
- Product marketing manager responsible for message development and email marketing
- Social media manager responsible for social media advertising and influencer partnerships
- Sales team responsible for product demonstrations
Evaluation:
- Monitor email open and click-through rates
- Track social media engagement and conversions
- Assess the number of product demonstrations and customer feedback
- Measure influencer reach and impact
- Budget allocated for email marketing and social media advertising
- Sales team resources for product demonstrations
- Influencer partnerships negotiated and managed by the social media manager
Implementation and Monitoring:
- Execute email marketing and social media advertising campaigns
- Schedule and conduct product demonstrations
- Foster influencer partnerships and monitor results
- Evaluate the effectiveness of the communication plan and make adjustments as necessary.
Q: Who is responsible for creating a Communication Plan?
A: The creation of a Communication Plan is typically the responsibility of the marketing or communications team, although it can involve input and collaboration from other departments as well.
Q: How often should a Communication Plan be reviewed and updated?
A: A Communication Plan should be reviewed and updated regularly, at least once a year, or as needed based on changes in the business environment or communication objectives.
Q: What are some common channels of communication in a Communication Plan?
A: Some common channels of communication in a Communication Plan include email marketing, social media advertising, product demonstrations, influencer partnerships, and events.
Q: How do you evaluate the success of a Communication Plan?
A: The success of a Communication Plan can be evaluated by monitoring metrics such as email open and click-through rates, social media engagement and conversions, product demonstrations and customer feedback, and influencer reach and impact.
Q: How do you prioritize which channels to use in a Communication Plan?
A: The channels to use in a Communication Plan should be based on the goals and objectives, target audience, and resources available. The best channels will vary based on the specific scenario, but generally, the most effective channels will be those that reach the target audience most effectively and efficiently.
Q: Can a Communication Plan change over time?
A: Yes, a Communication Plan can and should change over time based on changes in the business environment, target audience, or communication objectives. The Communication Plan should be flexible enough to accommodate changes as needed.
Q: How do you measure the impact of a Communication Plan?
A: The impact of a Communication Plan can be measured by monitoring metrics such as email open and click-through rates, social media engagement and conversions, product demonstrations and customer feedback, and influencer reach and impact. It’s important to regularly review these metrics and make adjustments to the Communication Plan as needed.
Q: Can a Communication Plan be used for internal communication as well as external communication?
A: Yes, a Communication Plan can be used for both internal and external communication. The strategies, tactics, and channels may differ based on the type of communication, but the principles and overall process remain the same.
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Sample Business Plan Templates Now that you know what's included and how to format a business plan, let's review some templates. 1. HubSpot's One-Page Business Plan Download a free, editable one-page business plan template.
7 Business plan examples: section by section The business plan examples we'll look at below follow this example template: Click here to start selling online now with Shopify Executive summary. An introductory overview of your business. Company description. A more in-depth and detailed description of your business and why it exists. Market analysis.
In your company analysis, you will detail the type of website design business you are operating. For example, you might operate one of the following types of website design businesses: WordPress website design: this type of business builds websites with WordPress, due to its capabilities, plugin options, and templates.
Ecommerce Business Plan Examples 1. Maple Ecommerce Plan This sample plan, provided on LinkedIn, is for a fictional company called Maple, an online store that sells exclusive Apple products. Maple's sample plan is great because it provides easy-to-follow charts and graphics while highlighting the most important information.
Explore over 500 free real-world business plan examples from a wide variety of industries to guide you through writing your own plan. If you're looking for an intuitive tool that walks you through the plan writing process, we recommend LivePlan.
Example traditional business plans Before you write your business plan, read the following example business plans written by fictional business owners. Rebecca owns a consulting firm, and Andrew owns a toy company. Download Rebecca's business plan Download Andrew's business plan Lean startup format
7 business plan examples (section by section) Executive summary Company description Market analysis Products and services Marketing plan Logistics and operations Financial plan 3 Types of business plan (and what to write for each) One-pager Startup Internal Feasibility 4
Keep your business plan short and simple. Go for it right now with this One Page Web Design Business Plan. 2. Use visual charts to quickly show key numbers. 3. Do what you do best, and make it look professional. 4. Ask key questions like what will be it's annual revenue in a year, and in 5 years. 5. What things can I delegate?
PowerPoint Business plan (Design) Word Business report (Professional design) Word Explore premium templates Business contrast presentation (widescreen) PowerPoint Business project plan presentation (widescreen) PowerPoint Healthcare business plan Word Business plan checklist with SWOT analysis Excel Tactical business marketing plan Word
Phase 1: Pre Website Planning 1.1. Determine Your Website Objectives 1.1.1. Analyze the Websites of Your Top Competitors and Market Trends 2. Phase 2: Information Architecture and User Flows 2.1. Organize Information with Information Architecture 2.2. Define Your Website's Structure Using a Site Map 2.2.1. Sketch your sitemap 2.2.2.
For example, our cottage baker startup might consider these revenue streams: Product sales: Online, pop-up shops, wholesale and (future) in-store sales Affiliate income: Monetize blog and social...
Typically, a good business plan consists of the following: Executive summary Company description Mission statement Product and services Marketing plan Operations plan Management organization Financial plan Conclusion & appendix Every section involved in a business plan is designed to help startup businesses reach their target market.
This is the standard web design business plan outline which will cover all important sections that you should include in your business plan. Executive Summary Business Overview Objectives Keys to Success Mission Business Target 3 Year Profit Forecast Company Summary Company Ownership Start-up Summary Company Location and Facilities Startup Cost
Let these informative and polished templates guide you through creating your business plan. Business plan presentation. PowerPoint. Business plan (Design) Word. Business Plan. Word. Small business startup checklist. Word.
5. SCORE startup business plan template. As one of the leading nonprofit organization devoted to helping business owners succeed, SCORE has created one of the best business plan templates because it is in-depth and customizable. It's available in PDF or Microsoft Word format here.
A business plan should be structured in a way that it contains all the important information that investors are looking for. Here are the main sections of a business plan: 1. Title Page. The title page captures the legal information of the business, which includes the registered business name, physical address, phone number, email address, date ...
Sample Business Plan Gallery. Browse our library of over 500 free business plan examples to kickstart your own plan. Browse our library of over 500 free business plan examples. How to Write a Business Plan. Step-by-step guide to establish the foundation of your business quickly and efficiently.
Executive Summary. One Week At A Time is a website business based in Lexington, Kentucky that is owned and operated by Frank Williams. The website aims to educate people on how they can help the Earth and lessen their environmental impact by accomplishing one task each week for 52 weeks. The tasks are simple and will show people how easily they ...
Website Business Plan Template Download this Website Business Plan Template Design in Word, Google Docs, Apple Pages Format. Easily Editable, Printable, Downloadable. Are you planning to determine what mix of products and services you will be offering through your website?
Single-Page Business Plan Template by HubSpot. Another valuable and free resource for small businesses is HubSpot, a helpful website where you can find templates like this simple one-page business plan. They include easy-to-follow instructions in each section. Once you're done, simply download the document to a Word document or PDF file.
A communication plan should include the following elements: Goals and Objectives: Outline the objectives of the communication, including what information you want to convey, what actions you hope to inspire, and what outcomes you hope to achieve. Target Audience: Identify the stakeholders who will receive the information and what their needs ...