With so much happening on a daily basis, it's sometimes difficult to know what are the important things to keep an eye on when managing your business website. Here are a few pointers regarding some of the more important aspects of monitoring and measuring your business website's performance.

Monetary Performance

How you define your website's monetary performance, as well as how you measure it, is going to differ from business to business, but there are two specific aspects that most businesses will agree are fundamental:

1. How much money you are spending on developing, promoting, maintaining and managing your website.

2. How much money you are making from your website.

It sounds simple enough, but it's not really as cut and dry as you might think. Most business websites have a marketing value attached to them that is difficult to quantify. For example, how do you measure how much money you made from people who found you on the internet, then subsequently phoned you to make contact, or walked in your shop door?

As far as is possible, keep accurate records of all money flow attributable to your online presence. Record the costs of development, maintenance and promotion of your website. Record online sales in such a way that you can calculate the cost per order. Ask your new customers how they found out about you, then keep track of their subsequent spend with you. This applies not only to your first sale. If you acquire one long-term big-spend customer, that alone can very often pay for a good deal of your online costs.

If you have substantial online sales, make sure that you are able to account for these sales separately from your offline sales. If you run online promotions, ensure that you include a tracking mechanism that will allow you to determine where your sale was originally derived - that way you will be able to revisit profitable online promotion opportunities and avoid those that produce little value.

Marketing Performance

As alluded to above, your website generates more than just the direct revenue associated with immediate purchases. Your business website serves another important function -- that of marketing your business to the world at large in a way that you would find impossible to do yourself.

There are many many ways you can track the marketing performance of your website, but the most important thing is to keep accurate records and compare them month-on-month, then learn from them and keep improving your website accordingly. Here are a few suggestions to maximize the marketing benefit of your website:

1. Update your site regularly with updated information about your business, your services, and the value you provide.

2. Start a newsletter to keep in regular and direct contact with your existing and prospective customers

3. Provide online feedback facilities to allow customers to contact you with positive and negative feedback, as well as sales leads.

4. Provide online customer service tools such as online message box facilities to speedily assist customers

5. Update your site regularly with press releases and other newsworthy content.

6. Provide articles online to assist your prospective customers with information related to your products and services. You are, after all, an expert in your field, and this is a great way to share your knowledge and showcase your value to prospective customers.

7. Utilize traffic monitoring tools to monitor traffic to your site. A good software package should provide detailed statistics of your visitors, number of pages viewed, from which country they are coming, and so forth. Make sure you keep a detailed history of this information, it can be a great way to track the growth of your site over time, and there's nothing better than seeing a graphic representation of that growth.

8. Provide online survey tools. This is a great way to research your market, especially if you have a number of your clients subscribed to your newsletter. A simple link in the newsletter to your online survey can quickly provide targeted research results in record time. What better way to learn about your market than to ask them directly for feedback? Make sure that the results are stored in a database for subsequent analysis.

There's a lot to managing your online business presence, it is after all simply an online representation of the rest of your business. By focusing on the direct and indirect benefits, monitoring and measuring them, you are sure to keep improving the performance of your entire business.

By carefully choosing the best relevant keywords and then using solid offpage optimization, you will be guaranteed increased online traffic for your website. This is good news for affiliate marketers and anyone needing mass traffic in order to achieve online sales goals. It takes a little work but is well worth the effort, so don't be lazy!

Your very first consideration when optimizing webpages should be keywords. Your online success is determined on how well you can choose these; After all, this is what visitors have typed into google or another search engine to find what they are looking for.

Keywords should be in demand, meaning frequent searches are being conducted on Google, Yahoo! , MSN etc. Words with a count of 300 to 500 are good. Words with counts of 500 to 1,000 are great (maybe). Count here means how many times per month the term has been searched on.

A good rule of thumb is to pick terms that have KEI (keyword effectiveness Index) of 10 or greater. KEI is a large potentially complex topic, fortunately all you need to focus on is knowing that the higher the index the easier the term will be to optimize. In other words a high demand search term with not too many competing websites will receive a higher KEI than a high demand search term with many, many competing websites.

You need to focus on keywords that are in demand, yet not so competitive that ranking in the top 3 pages in the Yahoo!, MSN and Google will be out of reach.

I must stress going through the process of offline optimization using poor keywords is useless. They should be specific enough to get targeted traffic but not so obscure that no one is searching those terms. If you optimize your website using poorly chosen keywords, your end result may be increased online traffic, but not bringing the specific type of visitor you had in mind, so it is very critical to get this right, all your other optimization efforts are influenced by the initial keyword terms you ultimately decide on.

Most entrepreneurs these days think getting a website and some product to sell online is a great way to make money, also, most advertisers make it seem quite easy with all the bells, whistles, promises and the marketing tools they present. To think of it these marketers themselves are actually tying to make a sale, so they pump you up and let you go with a product that ends up in your recycle bin. Most of the times you will realize at the end you have wasted hundreds of dollars on the so-called “easy to make money” software and advertising packages.

Some packages promise top listing, some promises millions of contacts, don’t be fooled, this is just a prank for you to get SPAMMED in most cases. It has never and will never be a walk in the park when it comes to online marketing. In most cases the existing price war will eat your entire budget and more. I listened to a program sometime ago on BBC stating that marketing is dead and I am now almost at the point of concurring. Are the household names eating away the possibilities for small and upcoming businesses?

Another big question is, are online advertisements too rich for small companies or individuals? Do small businesses need a “Gold Card” with huge credit limits? Tons of emails, websites, marketers, and SEO’s explain how to get the most important piece of online sales “traffic”, some even promise traffic, but what sort of traffic do you really get. After working and spending good dollars on trying to get “good” traffic I find it only gets more frustrating and if you are not careful it makes you want to pack up and leave the online world. Many small and promising companies have folded because of this frustration and wish or even hoped they had made other decision for marketing online but as always they were late.

Many search engines promises you great traffic, stating how much money can be made from visitors they send your website, yes the stats change and online visits increase on a click basis, but, what happen to all the money that was promised. Is it that these promises are not realizable? Is it another way to spend more money for nothing? Or is it, as the old saying, promises are a comfort to fools?

Take a good look at the listings for most products and the costs, no matter how many and how cheap the products are most online spenders still spend with the “big guys”. Where does this leave the small businesses? Most online spenders come online with the intention to purchase form the “giants” but they still shop around, when its time for the spending they still wind up with the giant. Is this because of the feeling of security?

After all the promises and the marketing “mumbo jumbo” about making money online with website that people just click and spend, after all the explanation of creating content that holds the viewers, after all the work to get the information out to potential customer you wind up with nothing. Will a day come when ranking is not the primary reason your website or business to end up at the top of heavily trafficked sites? When will the nightmares of spending money with no income in return end for small businesses and entrepreneurs?

As most aspiring businesses and entrepreneurs will soon realize the “big boys” always in most cases get the sale, your website might look impressive, your website might be fast, (as most marketers will urge you to make it) but still you rank low. Does looks, usability, and content rich websites rank over name? These are only a few online considerations along with the price wars that rage over the online playing field that suffocates upcoming businesses.

Many retail business owners are being pressured into setting up shop online. But is this a realistic expectation or is it an exercise in futility. There are some very important key questions that have to be answered before considering the move to online sales.

1.Are your products conducive to mail, phone or online sales?
You might think that every product can be sold online and, to some degree, you would be correct. However, should every product be sold online? The answer is no. Many products just don't sell well online because they are not conducive to impulse purchases, the demand is low, or the product itself has a long sales cycle. Given that most people will be making purchases online using a credit card, the products or combination of products should be easily purchased with a credit card that has a limit of $1,000 to $5,000.

2.Are you prepared to sell your products online?
This may seem like a very basic, but it will validate your motivation to succeed online. If your motivation to sell online is driven by a belief that “everyone else is doing it and so should I” , then you should serious consider the implications of selling online. Once you have made the mental decision to sell online, you can begin to formulate your strategy for doing so.

3.Do you have the resources to sell online?
Are you prepared to handle five, ten, a hundred, five hundred orders a day? Do you have the staff to fulfill orders, manage online customer service, and make updates to the website. Do you plan on doing this work yourself? If so, have you considered the impact this decision will have on the rest of your business? Create a plan that sets definitive goals for your online storefront, as you would for any business opportunity. Remember, managing a successful e-commerce website is a full-time job.

4.Who will build your site?
One of the biggest myths about e-commerce is that anybody can build and run an online store. The truth of the matter is that anyone can build and run a store online, but only a select few can do it well. There are many online store builders, shopping cart programs, and hosted applications that let you build a site and start selling your products online, but realistically you get what you pay for with most of these services. Consider hiring a company who specializes in developing online commerce sites for you. The result will be superior to a home grown site and will ultimately result in increased credibility and sales.

5.What is your budget?
Get quotes from a variety of vendors. You will find that the quotes you get back will range from a few hundred to tens of thousands of dollars. A reasonable amount to budget for your new website is around $10,000 for a full build out including custom web design and software, and ongoing server and maintenance fees of about $300 to $500 per month. When you consider your budget, take into account that the more you spend upfront, the less likely you will be to change the site. On the Internet, keeping your website fresh and updated is crucial to your credibility.

Now that you have answered the fundamentals, you will want to ensure you take the following steps to get your online store set-up correctly and efficiently:

1. Set-up an Internet Merchant Account
This is a must. You may be tempted to use Paypal, 2Checkout, or some other low cost online payment solution, however, in the end, when your site becomes popular and you start generating significant revenue, you will find that the discount rate you pay with a true merchant account will be much less. Although there is a little more work involved in setting up an Internet capable merchant account, your credibility, not to mention your payment tracking, will be greatly simplified.

2.Purchase a Secure Certificate
This is also a must. Securing your site is mandatory in order to avoid possible issues with credit card theft. All merchant account providers will require you have a secure certificate installed on your server before they issue you the account. Secure certificates range in cost from around $80 CAD to $500 CAD depending on the level of security and authentication you require. For the most part, a basic certificate is all that is required for online sales.

3.Organize your product data
Having your product data organized in a spreadsheet will go a long way to speeding up the set-up of your store. It will also help you organize your store layout and determine what products will sell best online.

4.Take good product photos
Since your online customers won't be able to hold or touch your products, a good photo is your next best option. Your photographs should be bright, with good contrast, and show the product either alone or in combination with complimentary products. For example, when selling a pair of jeans, take a photo of a person (preferably someone who looks attractive in the jeans) actually wearing the jeans. Have the person wear other complimentary products from your store like a popular shirt, shoes, and a purse. Customers will be more inclined to buy the jeans if they can see the jeans in context with other products.

5.Set-up a newsletter
Permission based newsletters are an excellent way to keep your customers coming back to your store. Sending a monthly newsletter that highlights new products, sales, or promotions can be a great way to retain and attract new customers.

6.Visit stores that you like and make notes
Do your research. Look at the sites that are at the top of their game and find out what they do. How are their products displayed? How does their shopping cart work? How often do they update their site? The more information you can provide to your web designer and developer, the closer they will come to meeting your expectations.

In summary, don't rush in to anything. Like all good things, a high quality revenue generating website takes time, money and effort to build. There's nothing wrong with starting small, but remember to constantly re-invest in your online store. Make improvements whenever you can and keep it fresh. The days of “build it and they will come” have long been over. Talk to a marketing expert and plan your strategy accordingly.

In order to generate online sales, your business must increase Web traffic and - more importantly - drive targeted visitors to your site. A highly successful method of doing so is targeted pop advertising, also referred to as targeted pop under ads.

With the right Internet marketing and advertising company as your partner, targeted pop advertising is a very cost effective method that allows you to increase Web traffic and send targeted visitors to your website. In essence, this form of marketing allows thousands of people to actually see and visit your website at the same time they are looking for your type of products and services. This is because the visitors have been targeted according to the topic or topics that you select. For example, if you are promoting a home business opportunity, Internet users looking for home business opportunities will see your pop under ads. Likewise, if you have a shopping site, or are promoting medical or legal services, visitors who are specifically interested in those areas will be exposed to your pop under ad.

In order to get the most bang from your marketing buck, choose an Internet marketing and advertising company that:

1. Has established affiliate relationships with popular high-traffic websites. The owners of these sites will have coded their Web pages so that a full-page pop under ad window will open when someone visits their site. This relationship will ensure that your website is displayed to thousands of potential customers or clients.

2. Has time delay technology that ensure that you will not be charged for your pop under ad until it has been on display for at least 20 seconds. Some disreputable companies will count ads that have already been closed by the user before being fully loaded or read, thereby decreasing your return on investment.

3. Has technology that overrides or gets around pop up ad blockers.

4. Offers advertising packages that only count unique visitors in a 24-hour period toward your allotted pop under ad block.

5. Carefully places pop under advertising so as not to overload website and annoy visitors; rather the pop under ads will have maximum appeal.

6. Offers a good value, by guaranteeing a certain number of pop under ads for a low price. You should look for a company that offers pop under ads for less than two cents apiece.

7. Provides you with a unique Web address to view the actual Web visitors who respond to your pop under ads and track your progress.

Research has demonstrated that pop under ads are often more effective than email campaigns. This targeted pop advertising approach works because only those visitors who are interested in your particular category are exposed to your pop under ads.

Despite consumers’ familiarity with purchasing products from the Internet, and the prevalence of website developers eager to work on e-commerce projects, developing a successful e-commerce website is no trivial matter.

Certain key factors must be considered before your website is built. Failing to consider these issues first invariably results in failure. Use the following 7 points to check whether your business is ready to benefit from e-commerce.

1. How Suitable Are My Products For An E-Commerce Website?

Not everything is suited to online selling and so it is vital that you understand whether consumers are likely to buy your products directly from a website. Suitable products tend to share common features:

• Homogenous – branded products are identical, irrespective of where they are purchased, and these are often good candidates for an e-commerce website. A consumer is more likely to purchase an item from your website if they understand exactly what they are buying. Books are a good example: a novel bought from one website is identical to the same novel bought from any other and so, in the consumer’s mind, there is no uncertainty about what they are purchasing.
  
  Conversely, personalised or unique items (or products that need to be tried on or tested) are not so well suited to online selling. Shoes and spectacles, for instance, are difficult to sell from an e-commerce website because the consumer is more uncertain about whether the item is exactly right for them.
  
• Shippable – the fulfilment of online orders is often the area of e-commerce that causes website owners most difficulty. Small, light-weight items are easily shipped and do not involve a high delivery cost that may deter online sales. To this end, many website owners will incorporate the actual delivery cost within the price of their products so that they are able to offer "free delivery", which can help to stimulate online orders.
  
  Bulky, heavy items can pose website owners some problems when it comes to delivery. If a product is fairly low-value item, will a £10 or £20 additional delivery charge be acceptable to the consumer?
  
• Inexpensive – consumers’ propensity to purchase online is strongly related to the perceived risk of making that purchase. A normally cautious consumer might adopt a more care-free "why not?" attitude when purchasing a book for £6.99. The same person would be far more reticent when spending several thousand pounds on an electrical product.
  
  Although high-price products do sell on the Internet, you have a natural advantage if you sell lower value items.
  

2. What Is Your Target Market?

Any Internet enthusiast will tell you that you can sell to customers anywhere in the world as soon as you have an e-commerce website.

If you run a conventional business that supplies to customers in a specific geographic area, the prospect of being able to sell across the world can be very enticing.

However, fulfilling an overseas order can be quite onerous: should you charge VAT to customers based outside the EU? Do you have to pay excise duties if you send an order to America? How much will it cost to deliver an order to New Zealand?

With this in mind, many business owners choose to restrict their website to accepting orders from the UK only, particularly while their e-commerce site is in its early stages. The downside of selling to a more confined market can sometimes be a sensible price to pay.

3. Payment Processing - Real-time or Offline?

Many websites complete online transactions at the exact time of purchase, while the customer is still viewing the website. This is real-time processing and it uses a Payment Service Provider (PSP) – an online service that provides:

• A secure environment in which the customer can safely enter credit / debit card details;
  
• An automated connection to the banking system, so that the card transaction can be verified and checked;
  

Secure Trading and WorldPay are two well-known PSPs.

Alternatively, off-line processing means that your website will simply collect the customer’s card details and store them securely on the server. The transaction is processed manually at a later date, usually by the website owner using a PDQ machine (credit card swipe machine).

Real-time processing requires no intervention on your behalf. As the website owner, you will be notified when a transaction is processed (although you will not see the customer’s card details) and you will then fulfil the order accordingly. Because this is an automated solution, it is hassle-free although it can be more costly, as your bank and the PSP will both take a percentage of the value of each transaction.

Off-line processing is dependent on your involvement, which can prove time consuming but it does provide you with the opportunity to vet customers’ orders before you accept their payments.

4. How Will You Attract Customers To Your Website?

If you run a conventional retail outlet, you will be familiar with the adage that the three most important factors in retailing are "location, location, location". Retailers know that a good location, with a steady stream of passing traffic, guarantees a high level of footfall.

Passing traffic is equally important for an e-commerce website. The most beautifully-designed, functional site will not generate revenue from online sales unless it receives visitors. An effective, well-planned approach to driving traffic to your website is a vital component of a successful e-commerce site.

Your immediate thoughts about generating visitors may involve Internet-based marketing. A prominent listing in Google, Yahoo and other leading search engines will invariably produce visits, so a well-optimised website may well be important. Similarly, a marketing campaign based on Google AdWords™ can also direct prospective customers to your website.

However, just because your shop exists online, you should not overlook off-line marketing as an effective means of generating visitors. Press releases, word-of-mouth referrals, magazine advertising and PR all have a part to play in your overall marketing strategy.

Many website owners focus too much on their site’s functionality and "look and feel" and then find that it is the lack of traffic that causes their website to fail. Understanding how you will generate visitors to your website is the most important factor in your e-commerce plans.

5. Do You Understand The Legal Issues?

Using your website to trade online introduces legal obligations that may not apply if you have a brochure-style website.

E-commerce website owners cannot trade anonymously. Your e-commerce site should show your contact details, including a full postal address, as well as details of the legal owner of the site.

You should also be aware that customers have the legal right to return a product bought from your website within 7-days of delivery. A customer does not need to provide a reason and you cannot refuse to accept the returned item (unless your products are exempt, as is the case with food retailers and businesses that sell personalised items).

Data protection, copyright and accessibility are other key legal issues that apply to online trading and you should consult the DTI’s website or talk to a solicitor to get suitable advice.

6. How Will You Choose an Appropriate Website Designer?

Website designers broadly fall into one of three categories:

• Graphic design firms offer print-based design services in addition to designing websites
  
• Multimedia artists create sophisticated design work, often involving 3D animation and sound
  
• Web developers have more of an IT bias and their technical skills are well-suited to building web applications as well as website design

E-commerce websites are particularly suited to web developers, as their technical expertise means that they are well-positioned to build secure, dynamic websites.

Choosing a new website designer can be difficult so ensure that you check the following before you make your choice:

• Have they developed e-commerce websites before? Ask for addresses of other clients’ websites and visit each site to check that it works well
  
• Are they knowledgeable about key e-commerce issues such as payment processing and website marketing? Ask them to explain how they would approach this for your website
  
• Do they follow a structured approach to their work or do things appear somewhat haphazard? A successful e-commerce website will require careful planning and you do not want to suffer just because your website designer is anxious to get the job done

7. Will Your Website Be Sufficiently Flexible?

It is important to check that your website will include e-commerce features that give you sufficient flexibility and control:

• Product updates – ideally, you want to be in control of your website once it is developed, so you will need the facility to update product details as and when you wish, without needing involvement of your website designer
  
• Stock control – retailers and distributors who can source products with a short lead-time can use their website to sell unlimited stock. Other businesses may need their website to enforce stock control, which allows the website owner to specify how many items are available at any time
  
• Discounts and offers – you may wish to apply a discount to certain products or place an item on special offer. Buy-one-get-one-free, x% discount and free delivery are typical special offers that you can apply
  
• Selling overseas – if you are selling outside the UK, how well will your website cater for overseas customers? Can you show product prices in different currencies, for example? Can you apply a different delivery charge depending on whether the customer is buying from the UK, Europe or the rest of the world?

Whether your e-commerce site is a new website or an upgrade to your existing brochure-style site, it is a major step for your business. The details involved are complex and the whole process can feel overwhelming. However, a successful online presence can produce a profitable new revenue stream, which will help you to grow your business and set you apart from your competitors.

E-commerce is no longer a fashionable buzzword; nor is it the latest IT fad. E-commerce is a permanent part of everyday business and you should plan your e-commerce website to ensure its long-term success.

What is your website saying about your online integrity? Perhaps a definition of online integrity would help in understanding what it is and why website owners should possess it. True online integrity comprises the personal and professional inner sense of your online existence deriving from honesty, consistency and uprightness of character.

Doing business on the Internet whether you are an ecommerce site or a lead generation site obligates you to a few basic responsibilities.

- Being an honest business owner

- Providing useful, reputable products and services

- Caring about the needs of your target market

- Possessing a desire to correct your errors and mishaps

- Acknowledging that the customer is not always right

- Building a sound customer base

- Being willing to walk away from customers who do not have your best interest at hand

The Internet can be a dangerous place to do business. It can also be a total windfall of opportunity; it all depends on which side of the business wall you work. Building trust with online customers is becoming more and more difficult because of bad apples determined to rip off online consumers.

Many sites will display association links and links promoting the security measures taken to keep your online sales experience safe and out of the hands of hackers.

If customers are to feel comfortable working with any online company there are 10 rules they should follow and website owners should be aware of these rules:

1. Contact the company before doing business with them.

2. Email or call and ask questions about specific products or services, don’t assume anything.

3. Ask about pricing. Most websites rarely put cost for services on their site.

4. Report questionable business practices to the Better Business Bureau.

5. Don’t assume that because a company has the Better Business Bureau logo that they are members.

6. Reputable companies should supply online receipts and faxed receipts.

7. All websites should have privacy policies if they are gathering your information. Read it.

8. Avoid websites that offer no contact information other than a contact form. Look for telephone numbers.

9. Follow up with a customer in a timely manner e.g. 3-5 business days.

10. Share these ten rules with your customers so they know you have their best interest at hand.

It takes time to build trust with customers, and it matters not whether you have an online business or a brick and mortar. Maintaining integrity in your business practice is probably the single most important thing you can do for your customer. Everyone benefits from “good business.”

If your business has a website, and you're getting visitors... you're likely wondering...

"Why aren't we getting all those new customers we were counting on? Why aren't they buying?"

Sound familiar? Well, here's the good news.

First, you're not alone. Most small-to-medium size business websites aren't selling much of anything. They simply don't know how.

Secondly, there IS a solution.

I'm going share with you the most important secret about successful, money-making websites.

Here's that secret...

"In the text-driven world of the Internet, it is the WORDS - not stunning graphics or cool technology - that are the REAL key to successful online sales. This kind of 'editorial marketing' is the new model for the MOST successful websites on the Internet."

That quote is from Maria Veloso. She is widely known as the leading expert in web copywriting, and the most widely acclaimed web copywriter in the world. No one knows more about websites that sell.

Well-crafted, compelling, emotion-generating words are THE engine behind successful websites. It has been proven, over and over again, through websites that bring in thousands, hundreds-of-thousands, and even millions of dollars in sales.

Why so many OTHER websites simply don't produce results.

Too often, websites have been been built around technical capabilities. This usually led to the 'picture here, picture there... click here, click there' school of how to build a web site.

Website developers, often technical wizards, sold business owners on the many ways to visually impress visitors, making 'copy' (compelling words) a secondary selling tool. The problem is, all that great technology by itself has very limited selling power.

So what's different now...?

In the last several years, a growing list of highly successful, 'copy-powered' websites have produced sales figures that FAR surpass that of technology-driven websites, especially for small to medium-sized businesses.

Behind this success are highly skilled marketers, copywriters mostly, who have energized this approach with sometimes astonishing results.

This craft is a combination of the art of sales-generating copywriting, and the science of quickly testing and validating results, with a speed never possible before the Internet.

What they have proven is this; A well-written website, one with a single-minded purpose and techniques to match, will motivate prospects to take a specific action. That is what produces leads and sales.

As you think about what you need to make your website finally deliver the business you expected, by now you realize that first, you must understand exactly what changes and improvements are needed.