Hello Web-preneur,

This is a newsletter focused on giving you information to help grow the return on investment in your web site. There are things to think about for every web owner.

If you have any questions about the topics discussed in this newsletter, please contact Kevin at 604-220-2724 or kevin@legge.ca.

With spring in the air I am reminded by a client that a website is "an organic process". To get the most from your website you need to do a little maintenance and updating. This will help your website grow, be productive and be something you can take pride in.

Be Great! Kevin

eCommerce - 81 million ebay users can't be wrong

Just imagine what goes on with e-Bay, everyday...every second...eBay will even tell you...

" In Q4-05, gross merchandise volume (GMV), the total value of all successfully closed items on eBay's trading platforms, was $12.0 billion. In 2005, eBay's GMV totalled $44.3 billion. eBay users worldwide trade more than $1,511 worth of goods on the site every second."

"eBay has 181 million registered users worldwide"

There are more e-Commerce tools available now, in a variety of packages to suit the seller, than ever before. Selling on the internet has come of age. By piggy-backing on the eBay community you open yourself up to massive exposure for your goods and services. For beginners: PayPal can offer a great way to get paid without setting up a costly payment gateway.

Search Engines - Spiders are your friends

Not the truly organic spider but rather the cyber spider with the G for Google or the M for MSN tattooed on its back, crawling all over the internet and bringing back bytes of information to its master, the all powerful search engine.

These spiders are your friends and you want to invite them to crawl all over your site and eat up your content, if search engine placement is important to your internet strategy. Don't block them with broken links and dead ends, let them crawl your web freely.

Site Traffic - What to do with what you know

If you have a good server package you are able to find out information on your site like hits, visits, page visits, page failures. How do you know what all these numbers mean? Should you care about unique visitors or is it hits that mean more? Well it is probably unique visitors that really counts. Here is a quick glossary.

Unique Visitors

The unique visitors section of the summary page will show the amount of “Unique” or different visitors to a page. This is normally the amount asked for by webmasters. This is a true number of visitors to a site for the current month.

Number of Visits

The number of visits is the amount of users that come to the site including return visitors. This is the amount of unique visitors combined with return visits. So if a user visits a page more then once in a 12 hour period, each of those visits will be counted and displayed here.

Pages

The pages section displays the amount of pages that have been viewed for the month. This basically shows the amount of pages within a site that have been viewed by users throughout the month.

Hits

Hits are the amount of visits a site receives plus the amount of connections per user. Each user that displays a web page may make multiple connections to the server to download images, text and any other information that may be needed for the page to display. This is all logged and is displayed as the amount of total hits a site receives.

While these are useful statistics, the statistics on who is linking to you, what keywords find you most often and how people find you, like Google or some other search engine or directory is the information that will best help you fine tune your website to target more of your market on line.

Automated Mailing Lists - easy communication among groups

HOT TOPIC: E-Mail Marketing through lists, permission marketing

While this brings up visions of SPAM that is not what I am talking about here. I am talking about opt-in and opt-out lists used by companies to keep communication simple.

The list needs to have automated opt-in (subscribe) and opt-out (unsubscribe) ability and it should be secure.

When used properly this type of passive client communication can increase sales as much as 20% annually. More importantly it encourages proper use of communication and permission marketing.

eMail - SPAM should stay in the can! What to do to cut down on it

Probably the most frequent request most eMail users have is "Can I cut down the amount of SPAM eMail that gets into my inbox?"

Good news, "YES YOU CAN", Bad news, like most things "computer" it takes time to set up and tweak. Spam can be filtered at the SERVER and it can be filtered at the eMail Software. (Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora,Netscape, Thunderbird...)

From the server your web administrator should be able to mark and ultimately delete SPAM before it gets to you. It is not a perfect science and you need to monitor the filter and its settings at first until you get it working as it should. Once set up this should get rid of at least 50% of your SPAM.

The remaining SPAM can be dealt with by your eMail Software. This allows you to set up new filters or modify existing ones yourself without a web administrator.

The third thing you can do is take advantage of unsubscribe or opt out reply mails and web pages that will remove you from the list.

If you do all three of these things your inbox can become your own again.

Server Add Ons - make the most of your web and e-mail server

Server Add Ons are tools that can be used to quickly create Photo Galleries, Mailing Lists, Blogs, Chatrooms, Bulletin Boards, Calendars, Shopping Carts and many more useful web site additions.

Server Add Ons, like most web tools and software, come in all price ranges from free to expensive. Your web host can provide you with a list of Add Ons they support or offer. Your webmaster will need to configure these tools to make them work on your site.

Server Add Ons provide the average web site with above average capabilities for building traffic and bringing visitors back for more.