Category: Website Design

Building a Web Site for Success by Paul Barrs    It’s a strange anomaly. Most people who set out to start their own web site, no matter what type, build it for failure, not success. Crazy isn’t it? But true. They find a web site designer, tell him or here what they want – and boom – money down the pit. The saddest part in all this is that they don’t even know that they are destined for failure long before their dreams shatter and break apart. Why? The simple truth is this – “most” web site Designers don’t know squat about marketing. But – Isn’t the Web supposed to be that place where you “get on it” and cash in? Isn’t it? Hmmm. The past few years have shown us one thing: You’re either for Web-based advertising, or you’re against it. Those who are for it, have faith in the progressive technologies of the future, those who are against it have taken the time to sit back, listen and learn – more people fail Online than those who succeed. Statistics tell us that within 5 years of start up 90% of all small businesses will go under. My personal experience through my own search engine shows me that an even higher percentage of web sites will do the same. Why? Because they lack the fundamental strategies, marketing and development to plan ahead, foresee the pitfalls, and capitalize on gains. Here is a key secret to Website success. It’s “Easy to Do”, it’s also “Easy not to Do.” That applies to everything. It’s easy to do a web site marketing plan. It’s also easy not to do one. It’s easy to create a profitable web site, but it’s also easy not to create one. It’s easy to pick up the phone and call a new potential customer; or reply to an email, but it’s also easy not to do it. That one thing will determine your success, or measure your failure. However, on a brighter side, there are three specific things that you must focus on doing if your want to develop a powerhouse and dynamic web site. Those three things are: 1. Get potential customers to your web site. 2. Get those same people to come back. 3. Get them to refer their friends, family and associates. Sounds simple doesn’t it? It’s easy to do, it’s also easy not to do. And if you’re not consciously aware of this marketing reality, you’re probably not doing these three things. Let’s look at them. 1. Get potential customers to your web site. It does not matter where you are located, the differences in your product compared to your competition, or if you have a red, pink or blue roof. Whether you consider yourself competent in Internet Technology or not makes no difference. You absolutely must focus 50% of your planning time on gaining new visitors and customer enquiries. (Initially 80% if your web site is just starting) Use every method available to you. Utilise every single resource. Study and learn what it takes to get people to visit your web site. Visit your competitions web sites. Survey your visitors. Do what it takes. I know I’m pointing out the obvious, but if your head is stuck in pricing package development, or management and accounting you won’t be able to see the trees from the forest. Visitors to your web site are your lifeblood. They are your bread and butter. They represent every reason why you go Online in the first place – to make money. And it’s not your web design firms responsibility alone – you pay the bills, so the buck stops right in your office. So get them and get them quick. 2. Get those same people to come back. It’s a proven fact that most people will not buy from you on their first contact (Or even contact you for that fact). There are no exceptions to this rule. A prospective customer must have exposure to your web site an average of 5 times (depending on their readiness and buying time frame) before they will even contact you. The world of professional selling tells us that most sales closes take place on the 7th contact. What does this tell you? If you work so hard at getting new people to your web site, but then not getting them to come back – you’re building for failure. Don’t do it! Stop right now and look at your sales systems. Do they make allowances for automatic or semi-automatic follow up? Do you offer Auto responders from your web site? Do you have downloadable information that they can access. Do you use contact management software so that you don’t loose track of potential customers? Why do you think the Pro’s in your industry are the top income earners? Think about that. They keep in touch with people. Either that or they invest some ridiculously high amount of cash each month to attract first time visitors and work on the Hit and Miss ratio. 3. Get them to refer their friends, family and associates. This is the cream of the crop. When you set out in your web site, you must focus 80% of your time on getting new contacts. As your web site traffic develops, you must then change that focus to 80% gaining referrals. Referrals are the sweetest prospective customers of all. They are already pre-qualified. They already want what you have to offer. And you don’t have to spend a cent getting them! If your web site is fully operational, you can do this with a simple, click and refer a friend script. It take only moments to set up. But even more – are you ready for the kicker? You must ASK people for their referrals! When you’ve got a great package to offer, it’s fantastic. But there is really no point in working really hard to get a brand new fresh customer at great expense when all you have to do is ASK your existing customers and visitors for a few referrals. Don’t be shy. You ask, and most of them will happily give. It’s that easy. Easy to do, easy not to do. Can you see the pattern developing here, the difference between success and failure, those that do and those that don’t? All these things are easy to do. They are, really. But most people opt for the easier choice – not to do. The choice is yours. Build your web site for success with qualified customer and visitor flow and you will reap the rewards.   Paul Barrs has compiled a complete Seminar Series titled “Website Magic!”. In it you will find 10 audio tutorials covering all the essential aspects of profitable web site design, showing you how to Make More Profit in your web site business. Download it Free from: http://www.paulbarrs.com Related Subjects: Web Site Design firms, softwares, and articles Launch your online store – learn more on ecommerce     top of web site design article

How to Stop Digital Thieves with CGI                           by Steve Humphrey, Visit his website >>>    I’m going to assume you’re serious about your business. If you’re not, I can’t help you anyway. You’ve gone as far as getting a real merchant account to accept credit card payments online. You know that this was neither easy or cheap. So does everyone else! So, a merchant account shows that you’ve made a serious commitment to your business. That’s good for customer confidence, which is good for business. So far so good… Now there’s the issue of selling stuff to people online. Your order form leads them to feed their credit card info to a secure gateway, using software you bought or leased from (or through) your merchant account provider. Finally, the transaction is approved or denied. If approved, the software generates a receipt and emails you and the customer each a copy. At this point, the customer is returned to a page you specified. In the case of downloadable products, this is often the page where they download your product. So, you’ve got the entire process fully automated. For a product or service with a fairly low price point and a potential for many thousands of sales, this seems ideal. You can quite literally make sales and earn income 24 hours a day. So, what’s the problem? The form code on your order page is the problem. If someone uses the ViewSource function of their browser, they can see all your code. If they have even a tiny bit of initiative and skill, they can locate the URL of your download page. After all, it’s right there in your form code! CGI provides two ways of fixing this problem. One involves using a script that makes it impossible to view the source code. You can find a source for such a script by searching the web. Expect to pay a lot for this technology. Another way is to make the return path a script instead of the actual download location. The script would be used to create and display the download page. It would not be visible to the surfer, since it’s not an HTML document. The script can also record details of the transaction for bookkeeping purposes. I admit that I discovered this by trial and error – and a lucky guess or two. Your merchant account gateway software may have radically different behavior than mine, but here’s what I’ve learned: The gateway uses the POST method to send the customer to your specified return URL (which can be a script as well as a web page). It also POSTs most of its input data items at the same time. They are usually ignored, but your script can read them if you want to! Use the names given to the form inputs. Have your script extract the values of these “named parameters” at the time it creates the download page. Record what you want to save about the transaction in your orders file or database. Now here’s the real secret to foiling the thieves. Inside the script, check to see that the variables you extract contain non-empty values. Did you get that? Here’s an example: if ($email eq “”) {exit;} In this example, the script expects to get an email address. If it contains no characters, the script quits instantly. By testing for the presence of some data in such fields as customer name, email address, item #, price, etc., you can tell whether the script was called after a successful transaction – or by a thief… Put all your security checks prior to the code that creates the download page. If any test fails, the script exits and the thief is left empty handed. If your form-handling script can convert a product name to a product ID that’s never visible to a browser, this provides even more security. This will be POSTed back to the script and you can check for it before allowing the download. Close these security holes and you’ll make more money. You may even sleep a little better knowing that people can’t steal that product you worked so hard to create. I know I do! Steve Humphrey promises that you can learn to use CGI to turn your own website into a marketing machine in two hours or less with his excellent CGI learning system: “Learn to Use CGI in 2 Hours.” He highly recommends this book as required reading for anyone who wants to automate their website or their marketing efforts. Click here for immediate access. Related Subjects: Additional CGI scripts and resources Launch your online store – learn more on ecommerce     top of cgi scripts page