You have invested your time and money into putting up your
company website. Your prospective customers are out there
somewhere and you want to make aware of your site, your
address, what you offer and why they would want to visit.

You have some ideas, but you don't want to waste money.
How can you avoid mistakes other smart website owners make?

By reading this article, of course.

I'm going to outline several tactics that DON'T work. By
the end of this article, you'll save time and money (not
to mention avoiding throat-clinching disappointment and
frustration) by skipping these Bad Ideas.

Bad Idea #1 - Let's get more traffic to get more sales.

Seems reasonable at first glance. But it's not always the
best course to take. How well does your site sell now?
What's the sales conversion rate of your website? If your
website is inefficient at converting 100 visitors into
customers, it will be inefficient at converting 20000
visitors into customers.

For instance, I may find a client's website converts 1
percent of their visitors to customers. If we can boost
that number to 2 percent, they have doubled their sales
without spending more money marketing. When they DO spend
money on marketing, they still convert the higher percentage
of their visitors to customers.

Bottomline: Take a look at your conversion rate before you
increase traffic. What can you do to boost it?

Bad idea #2 - Let's just buy thousands of visitors.

Many emails I recieve start with "I paid for 10,000 visitors
and I didn't make ONE sale. You'd think I'd make at least
one sale"

Many instant "traffic building systems" DON'T work. Why?

You've seen popup windows. Many times these traffic
building systems automatically pop open a browser window
showing your website. That counts as a visit. Yes, a
person who wasn't looking for what you sell and was in the
middle of doing something else. So of course they close
the annoying window.

Bottomline: You have other options to build traffic. The
goal is to get a return on your marketing dollars. You
want the throngs coming to your website to BUY.


Bad Idea # 3 - Where can we buy some banner ads?

Here's the skinny: Targeted banner ads are placed on sites
that have visitors who may want what you offer. Even these
banners typically get .3 of 1 percent clickthrough. That's
3 clicks per thousand views!

Bottomline: If you absolutely want to do banners, only do
them if they are free. By free, I don't mean banner
exchanges where you pay by putting banners on your site.
By free I mean free as part of your own affiliate program
for example. There are better tactics to spend your time
and money on.

There you have it. Three common website marketing mistakes
you can avoid. This frees up your time and money for things
that DO work.


About the Author
Raynay Valles is an independent online marketer who turns
non-performing websites into websites that sell. How well
does YOUR website sell? Visit http://www.jawdrop.com or
email Raynay now at rvalles@jawdrop.com