There is no one size fits all answer for this. Growing a website or driving
traffic to it is something that eventually happend over time. You may want to
tell a little more about your industry or target to get more beneficial
input. Good luck with the new business.

One thing I would add to this is that SEO will only get you far. Once you've
got customers looking at your site, you need to close the deal and that is
going to be down to the quality and price of your product and the impression
your website gives your customers, how easy it is to buy, etc.

That last point about how easy it is to buy is IMO vitally important. Not
everyone can be as slick as amazon, but with some of the sites I visit on a
daily basis it's punishing to buy something from them!

I would start with a catchy domain name. Then, choosing the right software.
If you want to sell online, try Prestashop. If it is to be an easy to work
with general website, start with Wordpress.
As for advertising, Adwords are great if you want to cover your niche
locally.

In any way, you will probably need somebody with experience to help you
start.

It truly depends on the type of web-based business that you are trying to
develop. For example, an e-commerce website would have different key
development points than a non-ecommerce based website. And on a more detailed
level, it also depends on the type of industry your business is based in.

However, on a more broad level, you should consider the following factors
with almost any website: readability of the site’s content, ease of
functionality for the user, search engine ranking.

You posted a fairly vague question, because the best answer would depend on
the type of business that you are in. All of the comments mentioned here are
absolutely valid, but I would like to add one related issue - never assume
that the website will be a huge success from the start. It takes a very long
time and lots of effort to increase your chances of succeeding. Certainly
don't fall into the trap of building a website and waiting for visitors to
come. Promoting your site is far greater project than building it.
Good luck!

I agree with GregHoward concerning using customer communities to gain site
traffic and search engine recognition. I've actually been doing some research
on this to try finding a good Q&A community to use; can anyone give me any
feedback on GetSponge, Answerbase,or Qhub as a provider? Thanks!

it depends on what kind of web business you are planning to build. adsense
advertising? drop shipping? Affiliate sales? marketing for an existing
business?

If you are going to start a business using a website there is a lot of
factors to consider, the least of which is consider the legal documentation
that you will need.

Before you business starts operating it would be wise to make sure that all
of your business documentation will protect you legally. This includes any
privacy issues that may come with your website. If you are collecting data on
your website, do you know the legal ramifications.

Normally you will only need a once off appointment with a lawyer, to make
sure that everything is covered, but this initial outlay could save your
business folding in the long run.

Reputation and customer service are top priorities to an online business. If
you don't make your customers happy or if you fumble your opportunities the
review sites will hear about it. One huge factor I commonly see wrong with
new business owners starting a website is that they don't focus on the
quality of that website. You need to understand that having a website and
getting traffic are two different ballparks.

Id say the most important factor to starting a website is to ensure that the
website you're building will last into the future and is of a very high
quality. I commonly see ecommerce companies that started off without the
future in mind and with no clue on how to get traffic. You can build traffic
by making your website awesome from a technical and a user-perspective. As
far as content is concerned, you need to always ask yourself "Am I helping
users?" "Am I helping users that may be searching for the text thats on this
page?". From a technical aspect, you need to be asking yourself "How can I
increase page speed?", "Can google read this?", "Is there a logical
organization to my website".

There are literally a million caveats in between these items, but I can
promise you, building a fast, well designed, well-coded(important) website
that is well planned should be a top priority.