By Tim Knox

What's My Competition Doing

The last question you need to ask is probably the most important. What is your competition doing on the web? Fortunately, checking out your competition is on the web is much easier than donning dark glasses and a trenchcoat to go snooping about their store.

Do a Yahoo search on businesses like your own or identify competitors in your area and visit their websites. How are their websites designed? Are they aesthetically pleasing or are they an insult to the eyes? Are they doing a good job of selling products or are they just vanity pages for the owner? What do you like about your competitors' websites? What don't you like? Make not of the things you like and forget the things you hate. You're not stealing trade secrets here. You're just borrowing ideas.

NEXT: Should I Master My Own Domain

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Tim Knox is an Internet designer, developer, author and teacher. He is the Creative Director of Digital Graphiti. In a prior life, Tim was an award-winning humor columnist and cartoonist. His current writing projects include a book on web development for SAM's Publishing.