It's amazing sometimes how a small change or feature can make a huge difference in effectiveness. On this page you will find a free website analysis checklist that you can perform yourself . By including most, if not all the success features of this checklist, you can be sure that your site will be optimized for performance. In other words, your site will be optimized to attract visitors and make the most of every visitor that comes by.

Take your time, open up an extra browser or two and go through the list. Take advantage of these recommendations and you'll be way ahead of most of your competition.

Website Analysis Checklist

Basic Success Features of a Website

Simple and flowing

When people are surfing the net they are bombarded with more than they can handle. That's why it's so important when they come to your site that you make them feel like it's not going to take them an hour to figure out how to get around. Is your site simple and flowing?

Not too many choices

For the same reasons I talked about above, your site must not offer your visitor too many choices. Too many choices lead to confusion. Confusion leads to leaving your site. How many choices are you presenting your visitors with? If it's more than a dozen or so on one page, you might want to rethink your design.

Selling should not be obvious

If you are trying to sell me something when I come to your site, I better not know about it. Let's face it, people who surf the net are looking for free stuff. Hardly anyone sits down at their computer and says, "OK, now I'm going to go spend some money!" Now, pretend you are a visitor. Does your site make you feel like it's trying to sell you something?

Offers lots of great free information

Does your site have lots of great information people can use? This is what people come to your site for. Hardly anyone gets on the internet and says, "I'm going to go spend some money now!" People want free information. Not really information about you, unless they are looking for specific information about you. Most people don't care about you or what you do. They care about what you can do for them! Especially if it's free. As webmasters we must accept this fact and design our sites accordingly.

The simplest solution is  http://www.paypal.com

Here are some other payment processing options:

Even if you have all of these methods for people to pay you on the spot, there are still some people that are not keen on giving their personal information on the internet. For those people (at least 10%) you need to provide a few more options like:

"Call Me" Order Form - people fill out this form and send you all the information you would normally get without the credit card info. Then all you have to do is call them back and they will be more than happy to give it to you over the phone.

Fax or Mail In Order Form - this is for everyone else, including people that don't have credit cards and such. No matter how technologically advanced we get, there will always be people that like to do things the old fashion way. In fact some actually take pride in it. It takes all kinds to make the world go around and if we don't want to miss out on any sales, we need to accommodate.

1-800 Numbers - Of course if you want to get really fancy you can even have a toll free number to a fulfillment house (or you, if you have time) so they can place their order painlessly and effortlessly just like we do when we purchase all of the wonderful "must have" products we buy from TV. (I'm not talking about me of course!)

Pop up/under Windows

I know exactly what you are going to say; "I hate those pop ups." Hate them or not, they are one of the most effective tools on the internet today. They are absolutely fantastic at increasing enrollment in newsletter and free courses. I do not recommend using them to open another lengthy pitch. Use them for short and sweet messages like "Hey, don't forget to ...." Make them open up as a fairly small window. Usually 4" X 5" is good.

If you have a real aversion to pop ups then use a pop under. This version comes up very innocently behind everything else and stays there until someone gets to it. You or your webmaster can find free scripts on the internet. Whatever you do, don't miss out on this great opportunity to maximize the effectiveness of your site.

Make it easy for leads to contact you

It seems as if this would be a given, right? I am totally amazed how many sites I go to that make it a puzzle to try to figure out how to get in touch with them. I have actually been to sites where I actually gave up. What is the reasoning for that? So they don't make it easy for the spammers to find their address?

The problem with this way of thinking is that if its hard for the spammers to get in touch with you then it's also going to be hard for your potential customers to get in touch with you. Let me let you in on a secret. Spammers have more patience then your potential customers do! Do yourself a favor and ALWAYS make it easy for people to contact you.

Test to see how long your pages take to load

Believe it or not most people are still on those slow-as-molasses 28-56K modems. It is very important that your page does not take too long to load. Why? Because of a little word called "CLICK." If they have to wait too long for your page to come in they will make like the wind.

To find out how quickly your pages load click here

By using this service you can find out how quickly your web pages load using 6 different types of connections, from a 14K modem to ADSL high speed internet. If people have to wait too long for your pages to load, they WILL move on, guaranteed!

Optimized meta tags

Let's face it! Most search engines today are more interested in $$$$$$$$$$ than they are in offering an accurate tool to find what you are looking for. Yes, even the big boys such as Yahoo are going the almighty dollar way. But no matter what the deal may be in the future, when the crawlers and spiders come crawling into your neighborhood, your site must be optimized for effectiveness.

To find out more on how to optimize your meta tags click here .
To find out more free information about meta tags click here

Newsletter

Having a newsletter is the best way to stay in contact with your customers or potential customers. If you don't like writing then you borrow stuff from other people. There is an endless list of people that would love to provide valuable articles and information for your newsletter, as long as you provide a little information about them.

Overlooking the opportunities of having a newsletter is a mistake that can cost you lots of traffic and money. You can also use your newsletter to build tons of traffic to your site by promoting your newsletter in directories, or anywhere else you can think of. For a great list of places you can promote your newsletter click here .

Free Multi Day/Week Course

Offering a free course is one of the best methods you can use to build a relationship with your clients or potential client base.

If you don't know how to put together a course then use someone else's course. I'm not saying steal their course here. I'm saying, get people to sign up with you for the course and send them your favorite course with all the proper credits to the original author. Always check and make sure it's OK with the original author. You will probably not encounter much resistance. After all, it's good for you and good for them. That's what I love about the internet -- lots of great opportunities for win-win situations.

Tracking devices - the more detailed the better

Needless to say that you want to know how much traffic you are getting and where that traffic is coming from. It is imperative to know where your visitors are coming from so you can concentrate your efforts on what works best. There are so many methods that work to attract traffic. You want to know what works best. Here is some free stuff to help you do that.

* Sitemeter.com - This counter is my favorite because it provides a lot of detail and you can keep your stats as public or as private as you like.

* Bravenet.com - This site is unbelievable. I have never seen so many great tools for FREE, including counters of course.

* Alexa - This site will help you see how your site ranks compared to the millions of other sites on the internet. Very important information. Never be fooled by people's claims again.

Bookmark this site!

Why not remind your visitors to do something they are going to wish they had done in the first place. You have a great site right? You should be on everyone's favorites. No kidding though, you always want to make it as easy as possible for your visitor to take some kind of action.

The code for doing something like this is fairly simple. If you are a webmaster and you're pretty handy with scripts and HTML, then just do a search on Google for "free bookmark script", and you should find what you are looking for.  If not, you will need to get your webmaster to do it for you.

Don't miss out on this great opportunity to keep them coming back!

Recommend us to a friend

If you don't ask, you usually don't get. I don't know what the exact statistics are for having a "recommend us to a friend" link. But, I know that it happens often enough where you don't want to miss out on this opportunity. There are all kinds of contraptions out there for this type of link. Some are more complicated that others. Here is the HTML for a fairly easy one:

<td height="25" width="129"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><b><a style="color:#0033CC;text-decoration:none" href='mailto:enter%20friends%20email%20here?Subject=I thought you might enjoy this site%20%20%20&amp;body=I%20thought%20you%27d%20like%20this%20http://ENTER YOUR WEB ADDRESS HERE'><b><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Tell a Friend About this Site</font></b></a></b></font></td>

Even if you just mention, "Don't forget to tell a friend" somewhere on your page, that's better than nothing. Don't miss out on this simple opportunity to bring traffic your way!

Link to us

A large number of people cruising the net are people that have their own sites. If they like your site, why not give them the opportunity to link to your site. As my experience grows, I have found that having links on other people's sites is one of the top 3 traffic producing methods. And best of all its free.

Just install a link that takes them to a page that explains how they can link to you. Provide them with sample text and descriptions, even banners. You never know! 

Make it as easy as possible for them to link to your site. The more links the better. It's a win-win situation and it can increase your ratings with some of the search engines to boot.

Guestbook

There are very few commercial website owners that take advantage of this little tool. It can be great to get some feedback on your site and to help add people to your mailing list. The first response to them of course is to thank them for signing your guest book and then you can continue to mail whatever you like.

If they liked your site enough to take the time to sign your guest book then they must be interested enough to keep hearing from you. Of course, always give people a way to unsubscribe. Many people that sign a guestbook are trying to create a link from your site to theirs. That's OK! On the internet, the motto truly is "the more the merrier." To start a free and easy guestbook click here .