For any business — online or not — the odds are stacked against success. In fact, sources indicate as many as nine out of 10 businesses fail within five years.

Having the fortune to work with a host of successful businesses — from independent designers to global service providers — you start to recognize winning characteristics.

But what are the treacherous traits that are responsible for the demise of most businesses? Based on an accumulation of notes over the years, following are answers by some of the most renowned business experts of our times.

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Entrepreneur.com has teamed up with Microsoft Office Live to publish the eBook “I Hate My Website!: 10 Easy Ways to Improve Your Website Plus 9 Disastrous Moves to Avoid.”

Here are the highlights:

• Have a basic plan. Before starting a Website, ask yourself these key questions: Who are my customers? What are they looking for? What are my competitors doing? What do I want to get out of this Web site?
• Keep it simple. Do not cram your Web site with features and information that may make it slow to load and difficult to read. If users cannot easily find what they are looking for, they will look elsewhere. Users will appreciate a fast-loading, informative and easy-to-use site.
• Pay attention to content. A Web site is one of the best ways for businesses to highlight themselves without any marketplace interference. While you can be creative with your Web site, make sure it includes some basic information such as About Us, Contact Us, Testimonials, News/Announcements and Media Coverage. These sections are your chance to promote your business’ strengths, core competencies and differentiating factors from the competition.
• Update frequently. Nobody likes going to a Website that has months-old information. If content is not updated, why would customers want to return? New content is easy to create through formats such as blogs, surveys and polls, and newsletters.
• Pay attention to the users. Tracking customers might seem difficult, but it is actually fairly easy. All Web-hosting companies should be able to provide free reports about site traffic. This data can show important trends, such as where site visitors are coming from, how long they stay on the site, and what your site’s most popular pages are. This information can then inform future revisions to your site.
• Attract users. Most search engines easily allow you to submit a Web site to their database so that the site will appear in search results. Look for the “Add URL” or “Submit your site” buttons. To make sure the site does not appear at the bottom of the results, focus on including as many relevant keywords and links as possible into the content of the site.

Webcopyplus recently completed an interesting project for B.C. Lions legend Jamie Taras, who’s taken his winning ways from the field to the boardroom with Team Taras.

Taras offers an incredibly unique team building event at B.C. Place Stadium. You and your colleagues get to partake in an inspiring session, which includes on-field team training amongst the football players and cheerleaders. To top it off, you get to cheer the team on to victory.

A spectacular way to take a break from the office and motivate your team!

Robert Kiyosaki’s ‘Before you quit your job’ takes you up several hundred feet to get an unobstructed perspective on what separates employees (who seek security) and entrepreneurs (who seek freedom). Moreover, the Rich Dad book reveals everything from how to deal with mental roadblocks to how to position yourself in your chosen industry.

Regardless where you’re at with your entrepreneurial endeavors, this book is worth picking up. While it sometimes overlaps Kiyosaki’s original ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ book, it contains several valuable gems.

While visting Seth Godin’s newest blog, which promotes his latest book, The Dip, I was moved by a magnificent opera performance by an unassuming mobile phone salesman.

Paul Potts, who confessed to having confidence challenges, earned a standing ovation within seconds of his performance and blew away the American Idol/ Britian’s got Talent judges. He went on to the finals and won the entire competition.

Regardless what business you’re in, this will prove to be an inspiration. Watch it here. It’s four minutes well spent.

Another Gem in the Rough

And here’s another moving performance. They laughed, and then they cried.

Susan Boyle, a 47-year-old that “wants to be a singer,” sings Les Miserables’ I Dreamed A Dream on Britain’s Got Talent.

Watch her blow the audience and judges away.

Watch Out for that Kid, Susan!

After Simon Cowell cut Shaheen Jafargholi’s initial song short, the 12-year-old dazzled Britian’s Got Talent’s judges and audiences with a soulful version of Michael Jackson’s Who’s Loving You.

Following Shaheen’s performance, Simon tells him: “This is how one song can change your life. And this may be the start of something special for you, young man.”

See Shaheen here.

During a coffee break at a Small Business BC web writing course I was delivering this week, an entrepreneur approached me for some advice specific to his business. After discussing a couple of solutions, he sighed and said, “things take forever to set up on the Internet.”

I grinned. Just a few short decades ago, business ventures required products to be built by hand, marketing opportunities were limited and distribution could involve railroads and steamships. Such vast operations would call for huge sums of manpower and money.

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Why do so many businesses lack respect for online customers?

It’s bizarre, especially in this day and age with Internet usage and spending relentlessly on the rise. Perhaps with so many suspect websites hovering in cyberspace, even credible companies tend to lose perspective.

Maybe it’s time to start thinking of visitors as online guests. It’s a simple ‘mind shift’ that might get companies to better recognize how their websites communicate with those they intend to serve.

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Businesses are continuing to push more of their marketing budgets online.

Not too long ago, PricewaterhouseCoopers reported online advertising spending will grow faster in Canada than anywhere in the world over the next four years. Meanwhile, in the UK last year, Internet expenditures overtook traditional advertising in national newspapers. And in the US, Forrester forecasts companies will spend upwards of $26 billion on Internet marketing per annum by 2010 – approximately eight per cent of all advertising spending.

Webcopyplus conducted a poll to determine what entrepreneurs and small business owners spend to gain presence on the Web. Of the 60 polled, more than 38 per cent of businesses spend between $500 and $6,000 on online marketing annually, only five per cent spend more than $12,000, and the remaining 57 per cent spend less than $500 or less per year.

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Just over a year ago, I had coffee with a pleasant couple planning the opening of a pastry shop in the Greater Vancouver area. I asked about the basics:

Branding? A friend helped them design a logo, which was printed at home on perforated business cards. Signage? A small, plastic banner was on order. Online presence? They planned to use a free template and “throw something together.”

After explaining the need to delegate, build a professional brand and get an informative website up so vendors, such as coffee shop owners, could conveniently peruse their product offerings, they politely nodded. It was obvious they saw such costs to be unnecessary.

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