3 Things Every Website Should Have
- 8 Comments... What do you have to say?
Tracking Software
You always want to know where your traffic is coming from. If you have a huge traffic day it is nice to know where all of that traffic is coming from. Also with tracking software you can see what your most popular pages are and when the most people visit the site, which might make you rethink when to post articles. Probably the most popular tracking software is Google Analytics, it is also free. I have also used Mint, which works well.
A Contact Form
You always need a way for your readers to get in touch with you. If there is a problem with you site or someone wants to give you a suggestion makes sure there is a way for them to do so. A contact form is probably the best idea for that since it will not reveal your e-mail address to anyone. If you don’t want to do a contact form you can do a contact me section where you list a contact e-mail address.
Ad-Serving Software
This is something I really never thought about until about a year ago. If you have ads on your site this is a must, for a few reasons. First you want to see how many people are clicking the ads. This helps with placement and to see if it is actually worth having ads on your site. Another good reason to have ad-serving software is what if you have an in-article ad on each page of your site. If you manually put it in there and you wanted to change it you would have to edit every page. With ad-serving software you can easily change the ad on every page. Finally if you have a private advertiser they might want to know how many impressions / clicks they are getting. On all of my site’s I’m using OpenAds, which is free.
- Posted in: Make Money Online, Ramblings, Tech Related, The Net
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What, no background MIDI music? No blink or marquee tags?
I totally miss those.
I lied. I don’t.
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Someone used my comment form explaining that I did not have an email address to get a hold of me displayed on my website. I don’t like to just willy-nilly give out my email address hence why I have a contact form. It emails me anyway so whatever!
As for sites without a Contact form, it drives me nuts when I am trying to send them feedback. If I can’t get a hold of you then I usually give up and carry on.
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I use Woopra for my Tracking system and have Google Analytics just for confirmation of traffic data. Woopra has live monitoring of your website traffic in a command center like Java client that opens once installed on your computer. It even allows you to start a live chat with visitors although that can be scary when they are not expecting a chat window to show up when visiting your website.
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Don’t forget the essential item to all of this: a reliable hosting provider.
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Sean, you’ve got it bang on. Above all else, make sure your host isn’t going to dump your site on your biggest day. It’s bad for business.
Also, Sitemeter was left out. It is used by Perez Hilton and Gizmodo among others. Run two if you can so you have a basis of comparison and as a double check.
OpenAds is no longer OpenAds. They are now OpenX.
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As for ad serving, you can also go with a SaaS (Software as a Service) solution, which does not require you to install and maintain the software.
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Oddly, Bob did link to OpenX… just named the link wrong.
OpenX is a great piece of software, but it can take up a good bit of memory.
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Have you tried Woopra? Is getting popular nowadays. Many people start using it.
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