Is it easy to innovate by starting a new website, and when is the best time?

It’s undoubtedly true that launching a website seems an easy way to innovate, but it’s not as easy to succeed as you might at first think.

The New Year is traditionally a time when our thoughts turn to resolutions, losing weight, getting fit, and starting new economic ventures – be that a change of job, house move, or starting a new business.

It’s a critical recruiting period for networking, as in Multi-Level Marketing businesses, as people put into place to start making the year ahead better or just different from the year that followed.

So, it’s also not surprising that many new businesses start at the beginning of the year. Creating a website or social media presence is a great place to start this journey. Still, if this is your goal, we’d recommend, at the very least, getting started on planning in the Quarter before if you can. Otherwise, you probably won’t get live until the Spring.

There are several reasons for this – finding a website address or URL is never as straightforward as you’d think, as all the best names are generally gone, even if they’re not in use. If your business then requires a professionally developed online presence, and most do, it’s not surprising that agencies will be at their busiest in the run-up to Xmas, so you may struggle to get time with them to plan precisely what needs to be built. And it’s essential to plan this as if the customer journey is clunky, you will fail to convert browsers into buyers.

There are, of course, other ways to ring the changes in a New Year. Existing well-established businesses can have a new approach, too, and here, some exciting options exist beyond the usual investing in growth and new ideas out of cash flow.

Businesses making around £1000 a day profit are surprisingly considered significant enough for possible inclusion onto the stock market by listing their shares for sale. A float like this brings new money into a business, which is generally best suited to funding aggressive growth plans or the creation of further USPs to help the company stand out. This, in turn, makes the Initial Public Offering of shares an even more attractive bet. Not surprisingly, funds are used on marketing and advertising, including Online Media and SEO, as these are amongst the fastest and best-performing routes to market for new ideas.

For businesses that aren’t quite big enough to float but still have big ideas for the New Year, another route to successful growth is also enabled by merging the business. This need not be via the dramatic step of selling out to another company; instead, through a concept called Cash Shells in the UK or SPACS in the USA, it may be possible to become part of a more significant entity which is floating on the markets and has particular aspirations to dominate a specific niche in the chosen market.

Any time is a good time to innovate, albeit the New Year may be more popular than most. Our advice, though, is to start planning as soon as possible and get good advisors who aren’t afraid to give honest feedback, not just charge you a fee. However bad or crazy the idea, we want your business to be one of the winners!

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