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Most web site owners who say they want more traffic don't realize they're not ready for it and the more money they spend to get it, the more they'll lose!

Is that you?

If you haven't done the four things on this list, the traffic you bring to your web site won't do you much good and the more you spend to get it, the more money you'll waste.

Here's the list:

1. SET UP TRACKING FOR EVERY STEP OF YOUR SALES PROCESS

You need to be able to test and improve the effectiveness of your landing page, your sales letter or home page and your "call to action" whether a sale or an opt-in to a newsletter. You can't test what you don't track.

When you split-test each step of your sales process, your web site is the worst it will ever be right now. Since you'll always be testing against something new, you'll only make changes to your headline, copy, offer or other aspects of your site if they beat what you have now.

2. DESIGN YOUR SITE TO CREATE A VISITOR ACTION

To get your visitors to take the action you want, you should consider a few things in it's design that many businesses don't. They are:

- Design your site so that a visitor knows what your site is all about in ' second. Have only one goal per page - multiple goals and many choices lead to inaction. If you have several goals, just use a different page for each.

- Use a headline that tells your customer what you can do for them (NEVER use your company name as a headline!)

- Have a "call-to-action" that asks them to do something. In most cases, you'll do best by "selling" them on opting in to get something free instead of asking for the sale right away.

- Make sure to capture your visitor's contact info so you can continue to market to them until they are ready to buy. Not everyone is ready to buy now and they may need to develop more trust in you before they buy. And, that's not all...

Your web site should not be about you but tell your visitor what you can do for them. Answer these questions from your visitor's point of view for every page: (1) why should I come to your site - what problem(s) will you solve for me? (2) why should I take whatever action you are asking for? (3) is there any reason I should ever come back?

It's critical that you do NOT let your web designer make changes to your sales page for search engine optimization. Save that for other pages. Your sales page should be optimized to get your visitor to take the action you want, not for SEO.

3. OPTIMIZE YOUR CONVERSION RATE BEFORE YOU SPEND MONEY ON TRAFFIC

You can get visitors in an hour using pay-per-click with Google or Yahoo). Get your conversion rate from visitors to sales/opt-ins to a respectable level through testing before you spend a lot of money on traffic.

I've changed a headline on a Google ad for a client and had it increase the results by a factor of 10. Going through the testing process can make the difference whether you make money or not. Google provides the tools to track your pay-per-click campaigns and their new "Google Analytics" system lets you track everything you can think of - and, on top of that, it's free. (It's still in beta testing so type "Google Analytics" into Google to find the link.)

4. KNOW YOUR VISITOR VALUE

Before you pay for visitors with any substantial traffic generating program, you need to know what a visitor is worth. This is a combination of what your average sale or lead is worth divided by how many visitors it takes you to get a sale/opt-in. If your visitors are worth $1.00, it doesn't make much sense to pay $3.00 to get one, does it?

Once you know that number, you will want to continually split-test and work to increase your visitor value.

Now that your site solves a problem(s) for your customers, is easy to navigate and you know what a visitor is worth, you can buy traffic because you'll know which traffic sources are profitable and which are not.

DON'T BE MISLEAD

The Internet offers a wonderful opportunity to do scientific marketing. Since everything can be tracked, you can make marketing decisions based on hard facts instead of opinions.

If your webmaster doesn't know how to do this, find one that does. The capability to improve your web results is readily available and is not expensive, so why not take advantage of it?

Most small businesses don't even know about this, so use it to get an advantage over your competitors!

Copyright 2006 Joe McVoy