2nd Series:Getting Started in

1. Getting Started

The first step towards creating an online
business is building a website. Now, that isn’t as
complicated as it sounds. When I built my first
website, I thought Java was a type of coffee and
HTML the name of a robot in Star Wars. That’s why I didn’t do it. I
paid someone else to do it for me. It cost me just a few hundred
bucks, but I earned it back soon enough. This chapter discusses how
to begin the process of creating your first website, and where you can
find someone to build your site if you don’t want to do it yourself.

1.1 Making Your Website Attractive, Interesting, Engaging,
and Interactive
To succeed at your online business (whether you are selling your
own product/service or are selling for other merchants as an affiliate),
you need a website created just for that - a simple, focused site. Your
website should be easy to build, maintenance-free, low cost, credible,
and a powerful traffic-builder and customer-converter.
Having the right tool and the right product alone won’t ensure the
success of your website. There are many factors to be considered
while designing a site. Unfortunately, most of these are often ignored
by Internet business owners.
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􀀻 Build It for Speed - It's a fact of modern life - people are in
a hurry. This means that you have between 10 and 30
seconds to capture your potential customer's attention. To
minimize your load time, keep graphics small. Compress
them where possible. Use flashy technology (JavaScript,
Flash, Streaming Audio/Video, animation) sparingly and
only if it is important to your presentation.


􀀻 Target your Market - Know who your market is and make
certain that your site caters to their needs. It is critical that
your site reflect the values of your potential customers. Is
your market mostly business professionals? If so, the site
must be clean and professional. Is your product aimed
mostly a teenagers and young adults? Then your site could
be more informal and relaxed. The key here is to know your
market and build the site to their preferences.




􀀻 Focus the Site - Make certain your website is focused on a
primary goal: selling your product or service. A site offering
many unrelated products is not necessarily unfocused, but
this is often the case. If your business does offer many
products, dedicate a unique page for each instead of trying
to sell them all from one page.
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􀀻 Credibility Is Crucial - The most professionally designed
website won't sell if your customers don't believe in you. A
clear privacy statement is one way to build your credibility.
Provide a prominent link to your privacy statement from
every page on the site as well as from any location that you
are asking your visitors for personal information. Provide
legitimate contact information online.

􀀻 Navigation should be simple - Make site navigation easy and
intuitive. Simple and smooth navigation adds to the
convenience of the visitors. Add powerful search and catalog
features. Visitors usually don’t have the patience to navigate
through the whole website to find what they are looking for.

􀀻 Consistency is the key - Make sure the site is consistent in
look, feel and design. Nothing is more jarring and disturbing
to a customer than feeling as if they have just gone to
another site. Keep colors and themes constant throughout
your website.



􀀻 Make your website interactive and personalized – Add
feedback forms as well as email forms that allow your
prospective customers to ask you any questions they might
have pertaining to a product. Personalization of your- 25 -
website is another key element that can build your visitor’s
trust and increase your sales. Personalization technology
provides you the analytic tools to facilitate cross-selling and
up-selling when the customer is buying online. It would give
you an idea of what products to cross-sell and up-sell. For
example, when a person buys a CD player, a disc cleaner
can also be offered.





􀀻 Content is King - Good content sells a product. Ask yourself
the following questions. Does your copy convey the
message you wish to get across to your visitors? Is it
compelling? Does it lead your visitor through the sales
process? Have others review, critique and edit your copy to
insure it is delivering the intended message. Always double
check your spelling and grammar.

1.2 Navigation

The aim of a website's navigation is simply to allow users to get to
the content they require. For sites that have a large number of
sections and web pages (and information sites can be one of these)
the navigation plan has to be properly researched and designed. You
have to consider different types of visitors and simulate the most
common steps they would take to find what they want on your site,6 -
and the navigation plan has to optimize this movement. For example,
the steps required from searching a catalog of items, selecting from
the catalog, adding them to a shopping cart, proceeding to check out,
to entering the payment particulars is a specific sequence that should
be facilitated by the navigation system. If the sequence is haphazard,
it could lead to frustration or the user may miss an important step and
you would have an aborted sale.


To find their way about, users need to know two things:


- Where they are now


- How to go elsewhere
Navigation does not exist in isolation; good site organization is a
prerequisite for a coherent navigation system.


Objectives of a Navigation System
Navigation can be broken into two primary types: Location
Indicators and Navigation Controls.








Location Indicators

Location indicators let users know where they are in the site at
the moment. You need to keep in mind that users coming from outside
your site can enter at any page, not necessarily on a main page. They
need to be able to orientate themselves quickly.
Equally, it is important that users navigating around your site
have a clear idea of where they are both in absolute terms and in
relation to other content.

Location information should appear on every page of the site, in
the same place and in the same style. Location indicators should tell
the user precisely where they are and this should be clear even to a
user who has entered the site at an internal page. The location
indicator should be identifiable for what it is and make sense in the
context of other navigation.

In simple sites a page banner - text or graphic - naming the page
will be sufficient. For this to work the page name should also appear in
the main navigation so that it is relevant within the overall structure of
the site.

Color can be used. For example a different color background,
contrast color or sidebar in each part of the site. To be really effective
the color change should be reflected in the navigation.
Using “breadcrumbs” on every page is a good idea. Breadcrumbs
show you a series of hierarchical links that you have used to go from
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page to page within a section. Using breadcrumbs is like leaving a trail
of the path you have followed. The breadcrumbs appear at the top of
the content section, just below the main navigation template. Each
element in the breadcrumb is a link to that section or subsection. This
helps in avoiding a series of back buttons allowing the user to directly
go back to the main section page or another sub section. More
importantly, it always shows the context of the page that is being
viewed and how it belongs to a section or sub-section.



Navigation Controls

Navigation controls are the main navigation links; they allow
users to move around the site. Whether they comprise images or text
they should be predictably located in the same place, and with the
same appearance, on each page.

These have several purposes

􀀻 To allow users to move about within the site

􀀻 To tell users what information is available at the link

􀀻 To work with location indicators to orientate users
A good navigation control:

􀀻 Is clear: it looks like navigation
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􀀻 Leads to obvious content - users have a good idea what
they will find if they click

􀀻 Is consistent with other navigation controls

􀀻 Is predictable in its style and location on the page
There is no mystery to usability. It simply involves creating a site,
which is accessible to the majority of people, is easy to use and get
around and delivers on its promises. You can have a site that meets
the most important standards of usability by planning it well and
always keeping the end user in mind. Remember that websites should
not be designed for their owners - they should be designed for their
users.

Problems with usability could be said to stem from just two
sources: the site itself and the user. In fact, the site is always at fault
if a visitor (however experienced or inexperienced) has problems
navigating, getting information or understanding the site.
While websites have become far more complex, web users have
become less experienced because more and more new people go
online every day. It is a mistake to think that the majority of users will
be web or even computer savvy and will understand subtle clues about
content. Many won’t, so make your site as easy to use as possible.



1.3 Defining a Usable Site
A usable site will:

􀀻 Help users achieve a goal, usually to find something, such
as information, or obtain something, such as a book.

􀀻 Make it easy for them to achieve that goal

􀀻 Make it possible to achieve the goal quickly

􀀻 Make achieving that goal a pleasant experience
A site will be generally usable if:

􀀻 The content is good and relevant

􀀻 The content is easy to find

􀀻 The content can be found quickly

􀀻 The page is pleasant to look at and cleanly designed

1.3.1 Good Content is Critical
A site with good content, regardless of its subject, is one that
provides products or information that is useful or beneficial to users. A
good usable site will make it clear what information or content is
available and at what price AND what is not available. A good usable
site should define clearly all subscription packages offered.

1.3.2 Ease of Access to Information
Good navigation, precise location indicators, secondary
navigation, clear linked text and a well-organized structure all
contribute to making information easy to find for a wide range of
different users.
Bearing in mind that many users are inexperienced, it may be
necessary to include explanations of things you consider self explanatory.
For example, an inexperienced user may need an
explanation of how to use a drop down menu. Remember, make it as
easy as possible for people to use your website.

1.3.3 Quick Access to Information
This is the aim of the majority of web users. It can be broken into
two important aspects:


Speed of Page Loading
This requires, in particular, attention to images to ensure they are
properly optimized and do not excessively delay load time. It may also
mean breaking up long articles and ensuring that important content is
at the top of the page where it will load first.
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Speed of Access to Content
This is where the 3-click rule comes in - no important content
should be more than 3 clicks from the home page. Some standards
even say that it should be no more than two clicks.
One helpful way to speed access to content is to consider each
type of user, select the content that they are most likely to be
interested in and create links from the home page to one piece of
content for each group. This will get them quickly to the appropriate
part of the site.

1.3.4 Cleanly Designed Pages
Cleanly designed pages are pleasant to look at and easy to read.
It is almost impossible to make a site with an image shown as a tiled
background usable - the whole thing is too distracting and confusing.
It takes no great design skills to create clean pages; it just requires
thought and adherence to the principle that when it comes to design,
less usually is more.

1.3.5 Download Status
Most paid membership websites are limited to online access and
information download rather than selling products. There should be clear download instructions provided. Your website should also state
the size of the file in kilobytes and the estimated time of download for
a user having a 56K modem, DSL, Cable and so on.

1.3.6 Usability Problems
While for large commercial sites investment in full-scale usability
studies may be essential, few small sites can afford such luxuries.
However, identifying problems with usability for your site need be
no more complicated than asking a few (honest) friends to act as
guinea pigs on your site and, if possible, watching them silently as
they do this. Watching users try to find information at your site can be
both instructive and quite surprising.
Remember that if at any stage you feel the urge to intervene and
explain, then you have identified a usability problem.


List of the Most Common Usability Problems

􀀻 The site does not state its purpose clearly

􀀻 Java applets, huge images, banner ads or flashy elements
slow down loading; 10 seconds is about as long as the
average user will wait for a page.

􀀻 The site requires specific software to be used. Have you
ever actually changed browsers or downloaded a piece of
software just to see a site?

􀀻 Poor navigation, too little navigation, too much navigation
and, not uncommonly, no navigation at all

􀀻 Bad design leading to poor readability

􀀻 Discomfort due to ugly design or inconsistent design. Almost
always because a designer overestimated their skills.

􀀻 Irrelevance of content - for example the business site that
includes biographies and photos of each of the board
members. Happy egos on the board; bored website visitors!

􀀻 Complexity or excessive originality of design, which requires
users to learn how it works in order to use it.

􀀻 Inaccessibility because the site cannot be used by browsers
for people with disabilities.


1.4 Building Interactivity and Personalization
Make your website interactive. Add feedback forms as well as
email forms that allow your prospective customers to ask you any
questions they might have pertaining to a product. Personalization of
your website is another key element that can build a visitor’s trust and
increase your sales. Personalization technology provides you the
analytic tools to facilitate cross-selling and up-selling when the
customer is buying online.
Personalization tries to restore to the online business the magic of
personalized attention which is one of the chief reasons why many
people still prefer in-store purchase. You can use personalization to
match your customer with the right products through either rules based or customer analytics-based processing. Thus as your software
stores customer information and preferences, it can help categorize
them into groups. At the same time, observations over time can
suggest products to cross-sell and up-sell. Thus when a person buys a
subscription to a fitness site, exercise equipment is also offered.
Amazon pioneered personalization on the net – when you a buy a
book, it shows you other books in the similar genre saying “people
who bought this book also bought these”, inducing you to buy more.
A consumer survey from the Personalization Consortium found
that 56 percent of respondents say they are more likely to purchase
from a site that allows personalization, and 63 percent are more likely
to register at a site that allows it.

1.5 Graphics
Your site has to be aesthetically attractive with visually appealing
organization and enticing images. Fashions change fast on the
Internet, so when you come to choose a designer, make sure you take
a good look at their portfolio. You want the user to just glance at your
homepage and understand immediately who you are and what you can
do for them.
1.6 Web Copy
Your website content should convince visitors that your service is
either unique or superior to that of your competitors in terms of
quality, and is competitively priced. It should show your potential
clients that you can provide the solution they are seeking. Your
product or service will solve their problems, answer a dream, enrich
their lives, and/or improve their businesses. You are the dependable
expert that they want and need!
Your website copy plays a major role in establishing and growing
your customer base. Website copy creates the “voice” of a company,
just as the look and feel of a site put a “face” on the company and on
otherwise intangible products and services. On an ecommerce site, the
copy plays a key role in closing sales as well as in up-selling and cross selling
products and services. Good website copy delights first-time
visitors, encourages return visits and propels both customer
acquisition and retention.
People read a web page differently than they do a brochure or a
newspaper. They scan, scroll, click, hit the back button, and hit the
forward button. “Reading” is about moving around and being in
control. You have one chance to make a first impression – to quickly
convey the benefit of staying on your website. I can’t overstate the
importance of first impressions, which in web-time are measured in
milliseconds. The layout, functionality, message and overall look and
feel of your web page determine who stays – and who clicks away.
Your story should be clear and to the point. The goal of any web
page should be to get the visitor to DO something: to move on to the
next step in a purchase sequence or to click for more information
about a product or service. Without readable, compelling copy and
clearly organized hypertext links, visitors are much less likely to
complete a transaction – and return to your site again.
Writing for your web page should always start from your visitor’s
perspective. What is your website visitor looking for? Why is she here?
How can you make her visit as quick and efficient and positive as
possible? You should take the time to clarify the goal of each page
before starting to write. If the page is part of a transaction sequence,
identify what may be hindering the buying process. Be sure
instructions are clear and easy to read.
If you are selling a service on your website, your Unique Selling
Proposition (USP) is your service’s most powerful benefit, in
combination with a strong, unique feature of your business. It answers
that most difficult question:

Why should someone do business with you?
Tell your customers what service you are selling and explain what
your service provides. What is the key benefit(s) to your customers?
What pain does it cure, what solution does it provide? Compare your
service with that of your competitors and highlight what makes you
stand out from the competition? Keep working on this until you can
clearly separate yourself from the field. As stated earlier there must be
a convincing reason for doing business with you, instead of your
competitor.
Summarize the above into one tight, powerful, motivating phrase
that will persuade your customer to do business with you and to trade
their money for the benefits delivered by your service.
As you start to work through the above four steps, you may find
this to be a lot harder than it looks. Don’t blow it off and give up! You must have a USP. If it was easy, everyone would have a great USP!
Come up with a tight, sharp USP that sells your service to your
customer.
Write tight, get right to the point, be keenly aware of the
audience for the page, and don’t use a three-syllable word when a one
or two-syllable word will do. Use call-to-action language and be
interesting. The page should be so clearly organized that, in seconds,
visitors can understand and get convinced to buy your product and be
able to anticipate where a hypertext link – or a “Continue” button –
will take them. Studies show that “ease of use” is the winning factor
on an ecommerce site.
If you’re going to promote your service and expand your customer
base using your website, potential clients have to be able to trust you.
Their confidence in you and your products has to be boosted.
Endorsements on your website from a valued friend or colleague, or a
referral from a strategic partner are the types of “leads” that boost
your credibility. You and your service must be perceived as being
trust-worthy before your visitor will be confident enough to contact
you or even buy your product.
Show prospects that you have their best interests at heart and
that you can adapt or customize your service to meet their individual

needs. Foster an ongoing relationship that steadily increases their trust
levels and cements a view that you are an “authority” in your field.
Another important aspect of convincing prospective customers is
to keep abreast of recent developments in your field. Check on what
your competitors are writing about, and watch for new trends. This will
keep your website current, razor-sharp and unique. By keeping your
eyes open, you will be able to grab an angle or niche that hasn’t been
well covered yet by your competitors. Portray this angle or niche on
your website.
Finally, be wary of broadening the theme of your site too much.
Try not to dilute your product or service’s targeted niche simply to
expand your base of merchant partners. Remember; focus on your
selling your service. That’s where the “meat and potatoes” of your
business will come from.

1.7 Choosing a Domain Name
In the physical world, you can distinguish a business because of
its structure, window displays, or signs. You can tell that a bank is a
bank, or a clothing store is indeed a clothing store.
In the Internet, however, it is an entirely different story
altogether. Your domain name is the only clue to your online business.
You do not have visual clues: no location, no look, and no store
design. Instead, users have to type in a word or a set of words to
reach your site. Your prospective visitor has no way of knowing what
your site is all about until she finds it and reads its contents. Who can
ever tell that Amazon.com sells books? Or that Excite is a search
engine?
Your domain name can spell your success on the Internet. A good
domain name is the best asset you can ever have. It can make your
business stand out in the crowd, or just float aimlessly in space.
The need to provide immediate clues to an online business led to
the prevalence of generic domain names. Generic names instantly
provide the user with an idea of what a business is all about, what to
expect and look for in a site. For instance, Etoys.com is a toy store.
The temptation of the generic name has been so powerful; that
some companies even paid ridiculously high prices to get the name
they want. The domains Loans.com and Wines.com were both bought
for $3 million each. Telephone.com was acquired for $1.75 million,
while Bingo.com sold for $1.1 million.
However, generic names do not necessarily create the “buzz” that
you’d like surrounding your website. Branding has always been about
proper names: McDonald's did not name their store Hamburger. Hertz
is not called Car Rental. FedEx is not Mail Carrier. Kodak is not
Photographs. Google is not Search Engine. Microsoft is not Computer
Software.
For better branding results, your domain name should stand out
and be easy to remember. Consider the following tips when creating a
domain name:
􀀻 The domain name should be short

􀀻 The domain name should be simple

􀀻 It should be suggestive of your business category

􀀻 It should be unique

􀀻 It should be easy to interpret and pronounce

􀀻 It should be personalized

􀀻 It should not be difficult to spell

􀀻 It should not be difficult to remember
Domain names can be registered through many different
companies (known as "registrars") - a listing of these companies is
available at ICANN.org. You can register for domain names from 1 to
10 years in advance and prices can vary anywhere from $8 to $30 per
year for each registered domain. Most website hosting companies, as
explained later, will handle the registration process for you, but make
sure that you are properly listed as the owner of the domain when it is
registered. If you have registered a domain name for a specific period,
make sure you renew it in time. You’d be surprised at the number of
cases, where website owners have lost their domain name to a
competitor by not renewing it in time.




1.7.1 Using Expired Domains to Skyrocket Your Traffic

Domain names provide a great opportunity to make easy money.
I’m not talking about Internet real estate, where you buy up good
names and sell them on for a profit. If you didn’t get positioned in that
market early on, you can forget about it. The bottom’s fallen out of the
market and the best domains are long gone.
I’m talking about expiring domains.
Thousands of webmasters invest time, effort and money to
promote their site and build up traffic. Many of them then lose interest
and move on, leaving their site active. That means that although they
still own the domain, they’re not actively promoting it. But they don’t
need to. All the automatic marketing systems they’ve put in place are
still bringing in traffic. The site runs itself. Now, at some point the ownership of those domains is going to
expire. If you snap up those domains once they come back onto the
market, you’ve got a pre-built stream of customers. You can either
rebuild the site, or redirect the traffic to your domain.
It’s that easy. In fact, websites like DeletedDomains.com
actually do all the legwork and let you reap all the rewards.
Do be careful when using other sites though. There are some
swindlers out there that will sell you subscriptions, provide you with
outdated lists, take your money and keep the good domains for
themselves. It happens, and there’s little point in taking a risk with
other companies when DeletedDomains.com does such a great job.

1.8 The Host
Let’s start where the Internet starts: with a host. A host is a
server that provides a home for your website on the World Wide Web.
Just as your computer contains all your files, so a host contains all the
files needed to run your website. Why can’t you just keep all those
files on your own computer? Because that would mean visitors would
have to connect directly to your computer to see your website and
that’s not a good idea. It wouldn’t be secure and it would make your
machine run like a tired snail. With a host, you can simply upload
everything you need to the server and your users can then connect
there to see your site. It lets the site run faster and allows it to have
all the security and extras it needs.
Selecting a host is the first important step towards building your
Internet business.
Hosting services and companies vary from totally free, shared
servers to large-scale dedicated machines. You’ll have to decide which
is right for you and your business.
Your choice of server will depend on how much money you have
available at the beginning and how much you plan to grow in the
future. In my opinion, for commercial sites, free hosting is a waste of
time. Your users are going to get blasted with annoying pop-ups every
time they surf to your page, it’s going to be impossible to get a decent
position in a search engine, and you don’t even get a real business
URL. No one’s going to remember your web address if they have to
type: FreeWebsiteHosting.com/my_site. However, it is possible to
choose a cheaper host at the beginning and move up as your business
begins to bring in money.

NOTE: One of the most important factors in choosing a website
host is the customer service you receive once you’ve signed up.
There are many technical issues that can come up once you have your
own website, and if you don’t have a truly dedicated hosting company to support you and help you resolve these issues when necessary, you
could, quite simply, lose your business. Trust me, I’ve seen many
thriving online businesses fall apart because they chose the wrong
hosting company. When hosting is cheap, there is a reason for it.
With website hosting, you get exactly what you pay for and you should
never compromise when it comes to who to host your website with.

1.9 Testing and Performance
You have designed a very usable website, you have hosted it
using a very reliable web hosting company, and you have integrated a
safe and trusted payment processing system with your website.
However, all these can prove to be useless until you know your site is
actually working and accessible. If you want to create an accessible
website, you will need to test, test and test again.
A recent Forrester Research report reported that failure to ensure
website quality will cost the average small or mid-size company
thousands of dollars in wasted expenditures on website redesigns,
forfeited revenue, and lost customers. Testing a website is a long and
tedious task, but it's perhaps the most important task of all. There are numerous stages to testing, all of which are very important. Ranging
from browser testing to content testing, none should be excluded.

Visual Acceptance Testing
Visual Acceptance Testing is the first port-of-call for all
webmasters. This type of testing generally ensures that the site looks
as it is intended to. This includes checking the graphic integration, and
simply confirming that the site looks good. In this stage you should
assess every page carefully to ensure that each looks the same. The
site should be tested under different screen resolutions and color
depths.

Functionality Testing
Functionality testing is perhaps the most vital area of testing, and
one which should never be missed. Functionality testing involves an
assessment of every aspect of the site where scripting or code is
involved, from searching for dead links, to testing forms and scripts.
You should also test your payment processing system completely
and thoroughly. After all, you wouldn’t want a potential customer to
get stuck at the last stage and eventually leave the site just because
there is something wrong with payment processing.

Content Proofing
This stage of testing removes any errors in your content, and
ensures that your site has a professional appearance. In this phase,
you should reread each page on your site, and check for spelling and
grammatical errors.

System and Browser Compatibility Testing
This test phase is completed in order to ensure that your website
renders correctly on a user's screen. To begin with, you should test
several pages from your site on different browsers such as Internet
Explorer 4, 5, 6, Netscape 4 and 6, and Opera. This can be extremely
important - if your site does not work properly with the Netscape
browser, Netscape users will end up annoyed, and they'll go
elsewhere.

1.9.1 Monitoring and Tracking
Understanding what your visitors do on your site is crucial
information, not to mention interesting. If a large majority of your
visitors who proceed to purchase a product leave the site when they
get to a specific page in the order process, you need to know about it.
It could be that the page in question is confusing or hard to use. Fixing
it could increase your sales exponentially. In fact, it is not uncommon
for small website changes in headlines and order processes to result in
a 200%-300% increase in sales. This is just an example; there are
many reasons why you want a detailed analysis of your site visitors.
Most website hosting services offer a stats package that you can
study. If you're not sure where this is, call up your hosting service and
ask them. Statistics are a vital part of tracking your marketing
progress. If you don't have access to website statistics get a package
that can help you in this area. Do not get a counter that just shows
how many visitors you've had. You'll be missing out on vital
information that can help strengthen weaknesses in your site.
A good website hosting service would offer traffic logs that
provide an invaluable insight into the traffic being referred to a web
site from various sources such as search engines, directories and other
links.

Unfortunately, traffic tracking provided by web hosting services is
often in the form of raw traffic log files or other hard-to-comprehend,
cryptic formats. These log files are basically text files that describe
actions on the site. It is literally impossible to use the raw log files to
understand what your visitors are doing. If you do not have the
patience to go through these huge traffic logs, opting for a traffic logging package would be a good idea. Basically two options are available to you and these are: using a
log analysis package or subscribing to a remotely hosted traffic logging
service. A remotely hosted traffic logging service may be easy
to use and is generally the cheaper option of the two. In fact, you can
get a powerful free tracking tool at: StatCounter.com. Other reliable
tracking programs include WebTrends.com and HitsLink.com.

These services do not use your log files. Typically a small section
of code is placed on any page you want to track. When the page is
viewed, information is stored on the remote server and available in
real time to view in charts and tables form.
A good traffic logging service provides detailed statistics
pertaining to the following:

􀀻 How many people visit your site?

􀀻 Where are they from?

􀀻 How are visitors finding your site?

􀀻 What traffic is coming from search engines, links from other
sites, and other sources?

􀀻 What keyword search phrases are they using to find your
site?

􀀻 What pages are frequented the most - what information are
visitors most interested in?

􀀻 How do visitors navigate within your web site?
Knowing the answers to these and other fundamental questions is
essential for making informed decisions that maximize the return on
investment (ROI) of your website investment.

The most important aspect of tracking visitors to your website is
analyzing all the statistics you get from your tracking software. The
three main statistics that will show your overall progress are hits,
visitors and page views. Hits are tracked when any picture or page
loads from your server on to a visitor’s browser. Hits, however, can be
very misleading. It is quite an irrelevant statistic for your website.

The statistic that is probably the most important for a website is
Page Views/Visitors. This gives you a good indication of two things.
First, how many people are coming to your site, and secondly how
long are they staying on your site. If you have 250 visitors and 300
page views you can figure that most visitors view one page on your
site and then leave. Generally, if you're not getting 2 page views per
visitor then you should consider upgrading your site's content so your
visitors will stay around longer.

If you see the number of visitors you have increasing as well as
the number of page views per visitor increasing then keep up the good
work! Always look for this stat as an overall barometer of how your
site design is going and if your marketing campaigns are taking hold.
Also, a good stat to look for is unique visitors. Once a person
visits your site they will not be added to the unique visitors category if
they visit again. This is a good way to track new visitors to your
website.

Page views are a good indication of how "sticky" your website is.
A good statistic to keep is Page Views divided by the number of
Visitors you have. This statistic will give you a good idea if your
content is interesting and if your visitors are staying on your site for a
long time and surfing.

Some people are intimidated by web traffic statistics (mostly
because of the sheer volume of data available), but they shouldn't be.
While there are many highly specialized statistics that can be used for
more in-depth web traffic analysis, the above areas alone can provide
invaluable information on your visitors and your website performance.
Remember, this data is available for a reason. It's up to you to use it.

1.9.2 Tracking Your Sales
Like any business, it is absolutely vital to track and maintain your
sales records. You should have a clear understanding of your income
and expenditures.
There are many ways to keep track of your sales. Using orthodox
methods such as keeping a paper journal is time consuming. Simple
spreadsheet programs as well as basic accounting software are
available at minimum or no cost. However, it is advisable to install
advanced accounting software such as QuickBooks, Quicken, or
Microsoft Money to keep track of your accounting.
Such advanced programs save you time by sorting your register
transactions by date, transaction amount, document number (e.g.
check number), order entered, or cleared status. The tracking feature
included in such software tracks, by user, changes made to each
transaction. Daily, weekly, monthly as well as yearly sales reports can
be generated with a few clicks. These reports help you analyze the
sales of each and every product. Logs and reports can be generated to
keep track of all your customers.

NOTE: Affiliate marketing solves many of the aforementioned
tracking problems for you automatically. When you become an affiliate
and resell other company’s products for a profit, the company you are
affiliated with keeps track of your traffic and sales automatically and
presents all this information to you in easy to read charts and graphs.

1.10 Building Credibility and Maintaining it
Finally, make sure that you build trust and credibility for your
business. We discussed earlier the importance of credibility. Credibility
is a key ingredient for any successful business venture. Building and
enhancing the credibility of the products and services you offer is an
ongoing and full-time effort.
Why not make sure the website you use works as hard as you do
to establish credibility? Let's look at elements that can be built into a
well-designed website to enhance credibility in the eyes of your
potential customers.

Offer a Guarantee
Nothing beats a solid, believable guarantee for building credibility
online. It may be hard to believe, but buying via the Internet is still
unfamiliar and uncomfortable territory for many people. It is up to
you, the business owner, to put their minds at ease. One way to do
this would be to offer an unconditional, 100% money back guarantee.


By assuming all of the risk, you will earn instant credibility points with
most potential customers.




Provide Contact Information
Even the best guarantee won't help establish credibility if the
potential customer cannot contact you. Post accurate contact
information on your website and make it easy to find. Provide as many
methods of contact as possible; do not simply post a link to an email
address. For maximum credibility, post the complete mailing address,
phone number (preferably a toll free number), and email addresses for
customers to use if they feel the need to contact you.

Provide a Brief Bio
Familiarity is one of the most effective tools for building credibility
on the Internet. How do you establish familiarity in a faceless,
impersonal medium like the Internet? Simple, tell people about
yourself. Post a page that provides a thumbnail sketch that describes
who you are. Be sure to include personal data as well as professional
credentials. Place your photo on the page so people can put a face
with your name. Creating familiarity will impart another level of
credibility for you and, by extension, for the product you represent.
In this chapter, we looked at how to build your website and
explained many of the elements your website must contain to be
effective. We discussed web hosting and domain names and even
talked about how to use expiring domain names to get free traffic
flowing to your website. And we’re only getting started! In the next
chapter, we’re going to look more closely at some of the more popular
and successful Internet business ideas.