Before focusing your energies on getting more traffic to your site, you need to focus on the site itself.  Your site needs to be attractive and needs to function well. Make sure that your web address is easy to remember. You don't want a web address that is long, confusing, and totally obscure. Even if it is free. Why not have www.Your-Own-Name.com The need for speed. Time is critical on the Web--the time it takes to find the right site, the right page and the time it takes to wait for each page to download.  People are only willing to wait so long for information, and the quicker you show them a page, the more pages they will look at.  Make it clear.  Your home page should state very clearly what business you're  in.  Focus on your product or service, target a market. Above all, people are looking for a payoff. NO Clutter: Visitors are distracted by cool spinning graphics and an abundance of images. If you include useless junk, your site will take so long to load that visitors will never actually bother waiting for your entire page to appear. They'll get frustrated and click away. Site content: You want your site to be informative. Giving away good, free information will draw visitors back!  Be sure that your sales copy is not vague and has no spelling or grammatical mistakes.  Frames  adversely affect the navigation of your site. Put information in tables that cover a percent of the viewable screen. Scroll bars: Do not force visitors to use unnecessary vertical and horizontal scrollbars...they make it hard to read your content.  Visitors will be confused.  Navigation: A good navigation menu is important. Your site should be easy to navigate providing links to relevant content and back to your homepage.  Some people are looking for your  phone number, some want to buy your products.  Make it easy for them to find what they want, so the prospects who do show up don't get confused and leave. Graphics and animation.  Make sure that your GIF files are always well under 50K, if not your web page will take too long to load!  How many colors are you using? Reduce the number of colors as much as possible. A 24-bit color (65,000 simultaneous colors) image looks great, but will cause your images to be much larger than if you dither your graphics down to 8 bits of color (256 colors) or less. Excessive Images: People often create pages with unnecessary images, resulting in a busy layout that is hard to read. This greatly increases the time it takes to load the page. Evaluate the contribution; how important is the image vs. how large. The most efficient format for images: JPEG is typically good for photos and other images, while GIF is best for less complex images like logos and line art. Determine which  format produces the smallest file size for each image. Are you using graphics where text would suffice? Consider varying the  size and color of text with HTML tags instead of creating your copy with graphics.  Extra fonts and colors slow down loading your site. Choose a font that is easy to read. Only use bold, colors or italics in strategic points. Reveal yourself.  Including your name, business address, phone number, or your e-mail address will convince your visitors to TRUST you! Focus on the customer. Discuss how your product or service will benefit your customer to generate some interest!  Offer something of value, you are building a website to please your visitors, not the board of directors. Cater to those who show up.  Make sure your site is worth the time of the person visiting and that person is more likely to come back. The number of banners you place, the number of links you have, the number of times you show up at the top of the search engine--are all pointless if you don't have a website worth visiting. Interact with your visitors. Request feed back. Provide  your e-mail address so visitors can  send you a question about your product or service, be sure to promptly reply and be helpful.. Timely replies create trust by developing a solid relationship with your visitors. Credibility is very important: Do not make offers and promises that can not be backed up.  Testimonials build credibility and increase your profits every time! Provide a guarantee. We've all been burned before and every time it happens, it becomes harder for us to trust anyone. Take advantage of existing fears by providing a confidence building, money-back guarantee. Make sure that your ordering process is EASY. A merchant account will increase your sales by as much as 300%!  A good shopping cart is essential.  Provide online ordering and keep normal business hours that make it easy  to contact you. Make it easy to buy.  Take a lesson from Amazon.com. They put a 1-Click button next to each book they sell to make it "one-click-simple"  to buy.   Capture visitor's information: You can use this data to increase your sales by following up with your visitors. Consider soliciting customer feedback that you could use to improve your product, service or sales process. Test your web pages on different browsers. You'll be thrilled with the results! Problems appear like magic... Netscape is particularly well known for holding up loading an entire web page simply because a closing tag is missing. If potential customers can't view your web site, they can't purchase your product! Update Your Site.  Keeping your site’s content current and adding new information frequently will encourage people to come back to your site and tell others about it. Set a regular schedule for updating your site. You may also want to include a "last updated" time stamp so that people know that your site is up to date. If your visitors leave your web site happy, they will return!!!

Learn HTML:  One way to improve your site is to build a site that is attractive, informative, and functional. Learning some HTML will go a long way towards helping you build your site. Here are some sites that will help you learn HTML and good web design: A Beginners Guide to HTML         Great Website Design Tips Get Software:  You can also get software that will help you build and manage your web pages and create images.  Most of these programs have 30 day free trials. My Favorite WS FTP a simple, easy to use HTML editing program Microsoft’s FrontPage for basic HTML editing Macromedia’s Dreamweaver to get more fancy. For photos and images, Adobe’s Photoshop  For graphic design, you’ll want to try Illustrator. Software for Tracking Search Engine Results! Webposition Gold .

 Tips for getting listed with Search Engines:

Tips for Preventing Fraud: Require an address for all orders and be wary when you see different "bill to" and "ship to" addresses. Verify your large orders by phone. Impersonation is easy - a free email account and a stolen credit card are all it takes, and you could be left holding the empty bag. State your company's intentions to prosecute fraudulent orders on your Web site. Report scam artists to the Federal Trade Commission or Securities and Exchange Commission. These government agencies treat Internet crimes very seriously and have prosecuted many cases.