January 2001 Newsletter

Contents: 

The Six Secrets to a Profitable Web Site

Getting Your Story Out

On the Horizon

*** THE SIX SECRETS TO A PROFITABLE WEB SITE 

***

1. 

Give visitors the tools to interact with you. The key to 

Internet activity is interactivity. People retain information that 

provides them with some type hands on experience and/or 

opportunity. Reams of text may be informative, but they can 

also be overwhelming. Ask visitors, even challenge them, for 

feedback. Direct them toward a specific action; better yet, 

provide more than one opportunity for sustained interaction. 

Web sites serve different functions: some are for information 

only, others are created to facilitate online sales, still others are 

an adjunct to core businesses. But, the success of all depends 

on visitors actually doing something, a CALL TO ACTION.

Here are some practical suggestions to stimulate your visitors 

to call:

a.

 Put your contact information on every page at the bottom to 

include email address and phone number. Don t make your 

visitors struggle to find a single link with your contact 

information.

b.

 Offer a discount for first time visitors. Be sure to link the 

discount with a short online survey or guest book so you can 

capture their information. AIT offers many cgi scripts free that 

serve this function.

c.

 Try the AIT etools suite for Free at http://aitcom.net/etools/. 

Includes some great interactive tools like a banner exchange, 

newsgroups, web based email and chat that help your visitors 

interact.

d.

 AIT also offers SharePoint at http://aitcom.net/sharepoint 

which is great for online collaboration. Online surveys and