Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

No need for a search party
Last night I asked for a search party if I didn't come back from wrestling with the site revision I wanted to finish. Well, I'm happy to report there's no need of one! As of 8:30 PM, the revised home page and navigation pages are up.

Whew!

Considering it was a task I've been saying since Tuesday, "Tomorrow I'll finish it up, easy," it's a relief to have it finished (for now). I could easily have put it off further with a decision to add more pages to smooth out some of the transitions. I figure I'll be busy writing new pages for days to come. I just hope the absence of those pages for a few days doesn't prove disappointing for any visitors.

I believe the pages stand by themselves OK. I just feel they would be even more useful if they linked to some supporting pages that expand on some of the steps I summarize on the new home page.

I really wanted to get what I had out there, though, so those supporting pages will come as I can do them. It won't be for a couple of days, though. I'm actually taking (most of) a weekend off for once to spend with family—Farmer's Market with my wife, Jo; a movie with all the kids; a Minnesota Twins game with the boys.

I'm sure I'll get a some work in; after all, I have the next issue of my newsletter due out this week and plenty of billable work that I need to get back to. But I plan to have a guilt-free couple of days (largely) away from the computer. Think I can handle it?
Jeff

If I have to look at that page one more time...
Well, my good intentions didn't quite make it again. I ended up spending an entire day on that one page I was adding. Well, actually, I should call it seven pages. Because my first order of business in the morning will be to break it up into seven pages. It became a monster that took on a life of its own!

But if this refocusing that necessitated the change makes the site work better with the way people currently show they want to use it, it's worth it.

Now I just have to do that and then refocus the home page. Do me a favor, will ya? If I don't fight my way out of this refocusing by tomorrow night, send out a search team for me.
Jeff

Seven Principles
More progress today on the shift in One Stop Web Support to a more cohesive structure. Unfortunately, I didn't get enough pieces together to upload any pages, but with a couple of pages tomorrow, I should have another step toward its new structure.

The site is moving away from being somewhat unconnected articles to a structure based on seven principles I've devised that I find essential for success in either a website business or eBay:

1. Make your business an extension of yourself—you sell most effectively when what you sell comes from what you are
2. Learn what your buyers are looking for and how they're looking for it—once you know they problems they want to solve, you can present them with solutions that are guaranteed to get their attention
3. Decide how you'll meet their needs—find not only the best solutions for their problems, but the best ways to receive value from them for your solutions in proportion to the value you give them
4. Work out the nuts and bolts of your business—learn enough about how your business model works to get your business functioning
5. Create your business to establish a relationship with your customers—gain their trust and you earn their business; neglect gaining their trust and they'll go somewhere else
6. Attract buyers to your site—only after you've addressed the first five principles are you ready to start driving traffic to your site
7. Track and test EVERYTHING—don't assume you're giving your visitors what they want; test everything to find out all the little things you can do to increase sales even more

Although you'll find those principles laid out like this only here, you'll find the truths behind them sprinkled throughout the writings of every web marketing and auction guru, but never put together in a concise form. I hope that this form will help make it clearer and easier to understand. Look for me to develop these principles on the site over the coming weeks as the site's structure becomes based more on these principles.

Jeff

The value of tracking
With four months of One Stop Web Support being active, I've been doing a lot of analysis of it lately—analyzing how people are finding it, what they're clicking on once they arrive—all to determine what's working and what isn't. Results, as they usually are, have been surprising.

I had put most of my focus on the website building part of the site, but I find that the auction information has been as popular, if not more popular, than the website info despite the fact that I devoted three times as much attention to the website portion.

The result is: more auction info coming, which you can already see growing. And in the next few days, the navigation will show a more even split between website info and the auction info. Keywords I'm targeting will be readjusted as well, and the whole site eventually will work from a seven step blueprint for success that fits both the auction and website business models.

And all of this is driven by what the referrer logs show people are looking for. Tracking is essential. You never know what exactly people will look for on your site when you start. You can have a pretty good idea by doing your keyword research, but you never know exactly until they arrive.

And once you do, you have the luxury of them telling you what they want more of and what they don't. And if you want their business, you need to listen instead of hanging on to what you thought they wanted. Look for steady changes on the site over the next few days.
Jeff

Another great movie quote
Ever since quoting a line from Batman Begins in Friday's blog and relating it to web marketing, another movie quote has bugged me into finally sharing it. It's from The Empire Strikes Back:

"Do. Or do not do. There is no try." Yoda

Many potential web marketers are satisfied merely to try. There's a certain status to saying, "I have my own web business," even though the web business in question does absolutely nothing, or maybe even has never gotten beyond being a distant daydream.

It's kind of like when I was trying to get into screenwriting, years back. So many writers were content to just go around saying they were writing a screenplay. Ask to see it and they would waffle a bit about how it was still in progress, not ready for anyone to see yet, etc., and they'd waffle about it for years.

And it usually never was ready, because all they wanted to do was enjoy the status of saying they were a screenwriter. The same thing goes with web businesses.

It makes you sound like a big shot to say you have a web business. But if you don't do what it takes to build a web business, you don't have one. At best, you have a vanity site, a dream, a mask.

There is no try. There is no almost. Either you do—or you do not do.
Jeff

Best free tools—Page Rank checking
I'm continuing my Sunday practice of sharing links to some of my favorite free web marketing tools. This time, we'll look at tools for checking sites' Google PageRank. The importance of Google PageRank has diminished in many search engine optimizers' eyes recently, as Google has grown increasingly secretive of the PageRank figure that they actually assign to a page.

For the most part, the PageRank that appears in the Google Toolbar is no more than a snapshot of what the page's PageRank was a some undetermined time in the past few months. Thus the PageRank cannot be taken as anything more than an approximation of the figure that Google actually uses.

But, at any rate, PageRank is like heroin to many people involved in seo. We crave it, even though we know it does us more harm than good in optimizing their sites.

But here are some of the best sites for finding out Google's (revealed) PageRank of ranking pages.

PRSearch
PR Search lets you enter a keyword into their search box. The results it returns also display the Google PageRank for the site. I'm not sure whose search results they use, but it can be very instructive in seeing the way PageRank varies over the top sites in the results.

Webmasterbrain PageRank search
Webmasterbrain has a similar tool. But it's even more flexible. It lets you determine how many results you want it to return, up to 100. And it lets you choose between seeing the results ranked by relevance or by PageRank.

CheckSum Code
And if you're of a technical nature, you might be interested in an attempt that one programmer has made to reconstruct the code Google uses to assign PageRank. Does it work? I haven't a clue. But to all you people out there do have a clue: enjoy!
Jeff