Is being Online a bane or a boon to your business? The usual discussion in putting up an online business always, at first instance, is much about the cost. The usual contention is that it is too expensive, and to justify it with the volume of business to be generated is always vague and undetermined at the start. These discouraging facts slows the decision process and limits a company's conviction to jump into the world of the internet.

The right disposition and factors that points you to whether to pursue an online platform should be more on what are your liabilities once the site is activated. To know the amount of liability shall provide you the value or cost of doing so. Once you are online, the cost of development is already actualize, and to achieve the scale of business to be created shall be how the site plan will hit the objective. So is it the development cost that matters most in a decision to embark in an online business, or how strong will your plan be just right for the target audience?

Since we know that the world of the internet is so dynamic and the Netizens are impulsive in their actions, the audience preference on their online experience is king! It is so diappointing, and this is so true with a lot of websites we go to, that we always fill out an inquiry form or a feedback form that never responds immediately to us. Moreso, when the ecommerce site doesn't even update inventory and product catalogs, that when we delight on a couple of items we are redirected to a "page not found" screen message. This makes the cost of the development so expensive for these businesses that they fail to account the backlash to their brands and their company's reliability. In a way, turning all their online efforts into very big liabilities. In this regard the amount of failure, by comparing the cost of putting up an online business at start up and the cost of not having a good site strategy, clearly dwarfs the former.

In taking advantage of the benefits of an online business, it is very much important to know how you will satisfy the target audience. And in ecommerce, in particular, the target market should already be clearly identified including their preferences, and how the company shall manage their expectations. If this is done successfully, I believe the cost of putting up one is a smaller risk versus the larger overall success that needs to be worked on.