Setting up a website is the very first step of an Internet marketing campaign. The success of your site depends greatly on how specifically you have defined your website goals. Without goals to guide you in developing and monitoring your website, all your site will be is an online announcement that you are in business.

If you expect your site to stimulate some form of action, there are steps that you can take to insure that your website is functioning at peak efficiency. One of the first indicators of how well your site is working for you is finding out the number of visitors over a given period of time, say a month.

However, just because hordes of people have visited your site, this does not necessarily mean that your site is successful. It is equally important to monitor the people that actually performed the action that your site was set up for and figure out the ratio of people who visited to people who took action. This is called your conversion rate.

To find your site conversion rate, take the number of people who performed the desired action on your site and divide that number by the number of total visitors to your site. Then multiply that result by 100. For example, you had 2000 visitors to your site in a given month. 25 of those visitors performed the action desired on your site. Your conversion formula would be (25/2000) X 100. In this case, the conversion rate would be 1.25%.

Another important rate to track is your sales conversion rate. If the desired action on your site is to provide a name and email address, how many of those people actually bought your product? Not everyone who provides their name and email address will actually buy.

After tracking these rates, you may find that you need to implement some additional marketing strategies if you are not getting good results. One way to boost your rates is to get increased traffic to your site. This can be done by launching a search engine optimization campaign so that people can find your site more readily.

Another factor to examine is the ease of use of your website. If the goal of your website is for a visitor to fill out a form, is the form easily accessible and understandable? If it’s not clear or if the visitor has to perform multiple steps to accomplish the goal, they may just move on to another site.

Finally, you may want to have a professional evaluate the copy on your website. Website copy must be specifically geared to your online campaign and not just a cut and paste job from your company brochure.

Evaluating your website performance is an ongoing process. Constantly tracking your conversion rates and analyzing your marketing campaigns can make the difference between profit and loss in your business. The biggest marketing mistake you can make is to just put up your website and forget it!

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This article may be distributed freely on your website, as long as this entire article, including working links and this resource box are unchanged. For more tools, tips, and tricks of the trade, go to: www.elitewebstrategies.com – Empowering You to Empower Your Business. Copyright 2007 Larry Lang All Rights Reserved. Lang Enterprises Inc.

One of the great attractions in starting an online business is that you can get your business up and running with minimal start-up costs. You can run a Google search and find free web templates, free hosting accounts, free teleconference services, and free PLR content, among other things. However, you need to remember that the old adage is true: you get what you pay for.

It’s important to do your due diligence in researching a free product, just as you would with something you would be paying for. Consider the company’s reputation, customer satisfaction, and make sure you can terminate or uninstall it if it isn’t working for you.

This is not to say that there aren’t some great free resources available out there. So how do you know when free isn’t really free? Answering the following three questions will help you decide if a free product is really going to be free for you.

1. What is my time worth?
We all have three personal resources to draw from: time; money; and energy. If you’re not spending money for an Internet resource or product, chances are you’re going to be spending time and energy.

Say you decide to use a free website template rather than hiring a web designer. Unless you know something about web design and html, you will most likely spend a much larger chunk of time to develop your site than a designer would. The web designer charges $75 an hour and it takes them an hour to design your site, while it may take you 6 hours to do the same job. Your time was worth $12.50 an hour. If you consider your time to be worth more than that, say at least $25 an hour, your “free” website template just cost you $75.

2. How much control do I want over details?
Many free resources have limited or no options available to you. It’s like buying pre-bagged fruits or vegetables. The quality as a whole might be okay, but each individual piece may not be what you would pick out yourself.

For example, if you choose a free web hosting company, you may be limited to one domain name and not much disk space or bandwidth. When you are just starting out, that might fit the bill. But what if you want more than one domain? Chances are you’ll have to pay for each additional site. And what happens when your business grows? How much time, money and energy will you need to spend to upgrade or change hosting accounts?

3. What are my skills and abilities, likes and dislikes?
This is a critical question and it’s important to be honest with yourself. Are you a computer techie, or is copywriting your forte? Can you get lost in the creative process, or would you rather be researching new sales techniques?

If you love to write and the thought of free PLR content inspires you, then it’s definitely a great bargain. But if you spend hours agonizing over rewriting, formatting, and publishing, then you might be better off paying a ghostwriter or a freelancer. If you’re a techie, that free shopping cart software might be a great deal, but if you’re not, you may end up paying the support fees for somebody else to clean up the mess you made trying to set it up.

So when deciding if “free” is really free, be sure to calculate the true cost to you in terms of time, money, and energy, as well as whether you’re going to be stuck doing something that you truly dislike or that is beyond your ability. The bottom line is that you are going to be spending a certain amount of time, a certain amount of money, and a certain amount of energy operating your business. To be successful, you need to find the balance that works best for you.

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This article may be distributed freely on your website, as long as this entire article, including working links and this resource box are unchanged. For more tools, tips, and tricks of the trade, go to: http://www.elitewebstrategies.com - Empowering You to Empower Your Business. Copyright 2007 Larry Lang All Rights Reserved. Lang Enterprises Inc.

One of the big attractions of running an online business is the dream of making more money with less output of time, money, and energy. With today’s technology, that dream can become a reality, and the key to that reality is the automation of your business.

When you are setting up your business, one of the first steps you can take in automating is to make sure that all your business tools are integrated. Is your website set up with a shopping cart? Does your shopping cart work with your merchant account? Are digital downloads set up to be delivered automatically? Does your hosting account support all the tools you want to use? You need to make sure that each of your different components are set up to work together and communicate without you as the middleman.

Once the components of your business are in place, you will want to automate the day to day and repetitive tasks involved in running your business. One of the most effective ways to do this is by using autoresponders. An autoresponder is an email or series of emails set up ahead of time to be sent automatically in response to certain actions.

Think of autoresponders as your personal secretary. You can use them to:

* confirm orders
* deliver download links
* manage subscriber lists
* notify fulfillment company of orders
* keep in contact with your list
* give e-courses
* provide product information
* market new products
* solicit information from customers

Once your autoresponder emails are created and loaded, you can take an order, process the payment, and deliver the product, all without even having your computer turned on! You can collect names and email addresses to build a customer base to market your products to, even while you sleep. You can deliver a 12-part e-course series while you’re on vacation.

Generally speaking, online customers are demanding by nature. They want to be able to order, pay, and receive products they buy online quickly and easily. Autoresponders provide instantaneous response to your customers, increasing customer satisfaction and boosting product sales.

Another way to save time and money using an automated system is to use help desk software. You can preload answers to questions, direct customers to a Frequently Asked Questions section, and set up different categories to determine what type of help is needed. This cuts down on the amount of questions and/or problems that need your personal attention.

While it may sound like a lot of work to get your automated systems up and running, the payoff is well worth it. Not only will you be free of some of the more mundane tasks that are necessary to run your business, you will be free to spend time investigating new strategies to increase your profits, grow your business and still have time to spend with family and friends doing things you enjoy!

– Resource Box –
This article may be distributed freely on your website, as long as this entire article, including working links and this resource box are unchanged. For more tools, tips, and tricks of the trade, go to: www.elitewebstrategies.com – Empowering You to Empower Your Business. Copyright 2007 Larry Lang All Rights Reserved. Lang Enterprises Inc.