Almost all server providers have counters and tools to monitor your website traffic. You can find out where the traffic is coming from and the regions from which the visitors are originating. You can also find out daily visitor statistics, and other useful things such as how they entered and how long they stayed to browse. You can learn about the demographics of your website visitors and track trends and patterns. By gaining a better understanding of the popular pages on your site and your site's overall performance, you can plan your sites future development, and even focus on specific aspects of your site. Depending on how precisely you wish to track your site's success, you can also purchase software programs to assist you as well.

The first few years of an e-commerce company is usually the make or break period of the business. Revenues may be stagnant and expenses may seem overwhelming. It takes time, patience and determination. Sometimes you just need to take baby steps, then be patient and pray.

f you are quite knowledgeable on your business's industry, then publishing articles online is a good start to building a reputation for your site. You can submit articles to free submit directories (where others can download your article as content for their own sites, giving you full credit), online magazines, ezines, and websites relevant to your business.

Paid Advertising

Pay-Per-Advertising:

• Pay-Per-Click: Pay-per-click advertising consists of a search engine or directory that places your website in their database, and charges you a specified amount every time your website comes up in a search and is clicked on, thereby, generating traffic to your site. The amount of the fee is usually determined by bidding on keywords and ranking.

Search Engines: As a business owner, your first priority should be to get your website listed in the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and Alta Vista. This can be done simply by submitting your website to the various search engines.

Directories: You can also submit your site to web directories, which are databases of categorized listings of websites. Focus on directories that are popular and that specialize on your industry.

Directories: You can also submit your site to web directories, which are databases of categorized listings of websites. Focus on directories that are popular and that specialize on your industry.

Advertisement should start immediately after the company is created and you have decided on a unique name. The more people see your company's advertising, the more they will recognize its name. You want people to remember your company in a positive way. It is similar to making a first impression when meeting a person. So the first thing you have to work on is your name and your face. In the business world your company's logo is the name and face of the company. Its effectiveness is based primarily on your logo design.

The first and the most inexpensive way of advertisement, is face to face advertising. You say your company name to people who you meet so they remember you. Now if you want them to remember you for a longer time, an effective way could be to hand them your business card with your name phone number and address. This is the most common way of advertisement.

You can customize anything; letterhead, envelopes, even on a pens and mouse pads with your logo design on it! Promotional materials are endless, from a t-shirt to custom pins. All this is done for only one purpose, so that as many people as possible can see your logo and remember your company. There are many different ways to advertise your business. The most important thing is to be consistent. When people start recognizing your logo and associating this image to what your company is all about, this is called brand recognition.

Why is it important?

The idea is to create strong brand recognition. You want people to think of your service or product before they start opening the yellow pages and looking for someone else. If you walk by McDonalds you don't expect to find a hammer and nails. Even if your logo does not say "hamburger", people still know what the company sells. Advertising is meant to attract more customers, to win their trust and build stronger brand recognition.

You don't have to be a computer genius to achieve higher search engine rankings for your website. Effective search engine optimization can be done by anyone who has the time and determination. There exists a horde of information, suggestions, ideas, methods and techniques about successfully optimizing your website for search engines. SEO companies do not use any 'special' tactics that we don't already know or that we can't easily research on the internet.

Safe SEO techniques:

• Content: Add valuable and relevant content to your site. The more content the better. Keep your paragraphs brief and to the point.

• Continuously update your website: Add new information and new pages to your site. Create a section on your home page containing up-to-date news items relevant to your business (ex.: "logo design" at www.logobee.com).

There are so many unethical SEO companies that claim to be able to boost your website to #1 in search engine rankings, however they use overwhelmingly aggressive marketing techniques and attempt to manipulate search engine results. This gives the industry a bad name.

The main problem with SEO companies is that they base their methods and techniques on research trial and error and speculation. As a result of the secretive indexing criteria of search engines, webmasters and SEO companies can only make an educated guess about the ranking systems and possible algorithm revisions.

Copyright infringement. How to cope with the rise of internet plagiarism

When it comes to corporate identity and logo design, copyright infringement has become an increasingly prevalent issue. As more and more small businesses find they need a logo to stay competitive, the demand has created a plethora of logo design firms that offer a variety of services from stock clipart images to custom design services.

However, because of the competitive nature of graphics design and the ease in which people have access to information, it has become difficult to ensure that a design remains the property of the respectful owner, and does not become duplicated by someone else. The ease in which an image or logo can be taken from the web and retraced is surprising, and there are even some that fail to realize that online content isn't simply 'public' domain. Therefore you should always be careful to properly document and trademark your logo design, Read the rest of this entry »

Internet search engines exist to organize the seemingly immeasurable amount of information available on the web. They direct people to pages that are relevant to their searches, pages that discuss the exact keywords they are looking for. For businesses that receive the majority of their clientele from search engines, search engine rankings can make or break their business.

Search Engines

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a marketing technique that enhances a website and its content in order to increase the chances of achieving a high rank the search engine result pages (SERPs). Search engines are very secretive about their criteria and ranking systems as they continuously update and revise their algorithms (mathematical formulas used to determine which web pages are displayed in search results), and therefore there is less likelihood of webmasters and search engine optimizers being able to achieve higher rankings by manipulation and spamming.

"LifeSharers is certainly an ingenious idea to increase the number and availability of organ donors. The more members it has, the more organ donors there will be and fewer people in need of organs will be unable to get them." -Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate in Economics Introduction - LifeSharers.org was one of the lucky winners of the Logo Design Makeover contest held by LogoBee logo design earlier this year. LifeSharers is a non-profit organization that was created to help encourage organ donation through its innovative sharing network. Dave Undis, founder and executive director of the organization was kind enough to set aside some time to be interviewed about their organization and the logo design project. LogoBee - Hi Dave, thank you for taking the time to speak with us. Dave - My pleasure. LogoBee - First things first, could you give us a little bit of background on what LifeSharers stands for and why Lifesharers.org founded? Dave - Certainly. LifeSharers was founded to reduce the shortage of human organs for transplants in the United States. Read the rest of this entry »

LogoBee speaks with Apprentice winner Kendra Todd and My House real estate partner Charles Andrews about their experience designing the My House logo, 

winning the LogoBee:"As you know, LogoBee is an online logo design firm and there is often a bit of a trust issue for some customers with respect to purchasing products or services online. Would you say that you are generally quite comfortable purchasing products and services online?" Charles: "I'm fifty-fifty I guess. I'm skeptical at times." LogoBee: "Was there something in particular about our website that reassured you that you could trust our company?"Charles: "I really did a lot of research. Your site is very professional. It just had a good, warm feel to it and you know, everybody, especially down here where we live, this is a big entrepreneurial capital. Everybody's got somebody who does logos and corporate imaging and I had actually went to a recommendation first. We spent a lot more money and I wasn't happy with our final product. And right before we were about to go to print with this new stuff, I was just sitting there one night, and realized that I don't feel good about Read the rest of this entry »