Strategic Planning: SWOT analysis.

SWOT analysis is an auditing tool that will help you understand your online business as well as its environment. SWOT analysis stand for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and the threats. It is used as a strategic planning method that you will need to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to your business. It is the first stage of any strategic planning. This analysis involves identification and evaluation of the internal and external factors that will favorably as well as unfavorably affect your online business.
SWOT is instrumental in scanning of the business’s internal and external environment that are influential in achieving your online desired business objectives. Your business external factors include the strengths and weaknesses and the external include the opportunities and threats.
Once you carry out this analysis it will help you to match and synchronizing the businesses resources thus creating synergy with your business’s competitive environment.
The strengths of your business are your businesses resources and capabilities that form the core of your competitive advantage. Competitive advantage is something that is unique to your business; it separates your business from your competitors’. The strengths includes, special products, brands with strong heritage pedigree, patents, superior customer service, trained and loyal personnel. Your online business strengths can include effective channel of distribution, superior website with high traffic and low price due to access to cheap labor.
Your business weaknesses include things that are not strengths i.e. lack of trained personnel, new brand name, dwindling customer base, poor distribution network, major law suit, declining market due to trend change etc. To mitigate the weaknesses, the norm has been to change the weaknesses to strengths creating new opportunities.
When we come to external factors, opportunities are just that, opportunities include unmet needs, improved infrastructure, new favorable legislature or new line of business that will create more opportunities. Opportunities call for you to synchronizing your business to exploit the new benefits.
Threats are what could stop your business from achieving its objectives, these include product line that are dying due to changing trends, new major entrant in the market, new hash tax regime, massive change of consumption behavior i.e. use fiber optic instead of Vsat in data transfer.

With a clear understanding your firm can develop new business opportunities thus creating growth opportunities for your products. You can as well develop new product to fit to the changing trends.
Strategies are developed by creating means and ways of maintaining strengths while improving on the weaknesses. There is no need of identifying opportunities that you cannot exploit, so as part of your strategy exploiting the opportunities while reducing your business weaknesses.