Sites that require users to log in to access certain information and/or purchase products add an additional layer of potential complication to the usability process. To avoid potential visitor confusion and the possibility for errors, it is important that any login process requires little or no thought on the part of the site visitor.

Once logged in, you must be sure that visitors are able to find the information they want and expect to find. My Account pages need to provide visitors with access and ability to view and change personal information, as necessary.

Login Access

Access to any login page (or the login form itself) should be available consistently across all pages of the site. Be sure the form or link is obvious and easily differentiated from other areas of the web page.

Security

If the information behind your login contains sensitive data, you need to use the appropriate security protocols, assuring visitors that that you take their information's security seriously.

Registration

If visitors are not already registered a link to a new user registration form should be present. It's also smart to have a global link to "register" for any new visitors to the site.

Account benefits

Non registered visitors should be treated to benefits of account registration. This information should be located on the same page as the new user registration form.

Lost password

All login forms should contain an option to reclaim passwords and/or username should they have been forgotten. This information must also be passed securely.

Remember me

You can provide additional convenience (though less security) by giving visitors the option of checking a "remember me" box which will allow them to stay logged in indefinitely.

Privacy

Provide a link to your sites privacy information/policy near the login form submit button or email field. This gives your visitors confidence that you will treat their information with respect.

Status

The visitor's "logged in" status should be displayed at all times with a ready access to logout at their convenience. When additional security is necessary it's a good idea to automatically log them out after a set period of inactivity.

Change info

Once logged in, visitors should have access to change their user information, including usernames, passwords, contact info, payment details, etc.

Change confirmation

Once the visitor has submitted their information to be changed, provide a confirmation screen that shows the old and new info. This prevents errors and helps insure information remains accurate.

Financial details

Provide links to relevant financial information such as transaction history, invoices, balances, payment methods, etc. Provide printable version of this information.

Up-sell opportunities

Visitors that are logged in provide you an interested, captive audience. Consider discreetly utilizing up-sell opportunities - without being overbearing.

Subscribed services

Provide visitors access to the information/services to which they are subscribed. Also provide additional subscription options, if applicable.

Information management

Allow users to change the way they receive information, providing alternate methods such as snail mail, HTML or text based emails or to turning off communication entirely.

When visitors create an account with you they are making a commitment to you to enjoy the services or information that you provide. It's important not to let the usability process break down after visitors are committed. In fact, it's even more important to treat registered visitors respectfully and appropriately, ensuring they have access to the information they need. This develops long-term relationships and keeps them coming back.

There are many ways to monetize websites for multiple income streams. And this article is just about that. Read on to discover 3 most popular ways to monetize websites made available to you for free.

Google AdSense

Google AdSense is the most popular among all webmasters since it is the easiest monetization plan available online. All you have to do is just add the AdSense code in your web pages to let Google decides what the best possible ad for that particular page is. By the end of the month, you will be paid according to how many clicks you got and how much the advertisers are willing to pay for each click.

The only downside is its earnings potential can be so low since it is at the end of the advertising value chain. But what you can do is continue building more contents (at least 150 web pages) based on your keyword research, optimize each page for specific keywords and market it to the whole wide world. By doing so, you can get maximum SEO benefits and make your visitors keep on coming (and eventually, keep on clicking to your AdSense ads)

Affiliate Program

By joining affiliate programs or through some sort of affiliate networks, you can have the opportunity to sell others' products and earn commissions for each sale. It is just like helping others to sell their products and get paid for your marketing effort. And the major benefits of selling affiliate products are:

• No product development: The owner had created the product
• No sales copywriting: The sales pages are already written
• No merchant account: You don't need to process the order
• No customer service: The merchant deal with any customer problem, not you.

So basically, you are leveraging on others' product to make money online. However, be careful and curious if the affiliate networks are charging you money since most of them appear to be kind of get-rich-quick scam. Nevertheless, you can start with established affiliate network such as Clickbank and LinkShare.

Sponsored Links

Sponsored links are sites that pay for placement in web space, which in this case can be in one (or all) of your web pages. The advertisers are willing to pay for such placement mainly to attract traffic from your website visitors. Depending on the number of visitors, you can charge them a once-off payment or recurring monthly fee. Either ways, you can monetize your website the easily.

In fact, this can be great income sources if your website enjoys high Page Rank (PR) of 3 and above. However, be very careful not to be penalized by Google. If you do, your website can be dropped from Google index since they hate webmasters who sell text links in their website for PR trade. What you can do is to keep your text link ads relevant to your website theme as much as possible so that Google do not find it too obvious.

Therefore, choose a website builder that can cater all of the monetization plans. After all, you don't want to limit your earnings potential due to software inflexibility, do you? After using SiteBuildIt for few years, I found that it has the capability to monetize website seamlessly.

Launched on November 2005, Google Analytics was an instance hit to all webmaster around the planet. Giving millions of people the capability to learn more about the web surfers that wandered through their website, the revolutionary service provide by the behemoth, Google incorporated, changed the way webmasters gathered and interpreted information from their websites. By simply adding a HTML code onto every web page that you want to track, you can gain insight on the behavior of your visitors and more.

So how do you use Google Analytics? Though most have a limited understanding of the service, many still remain in the dark on how to use key features and just how to interpret the data. Are you finding yourself in that position? Well if you are, you are in need of some Google Analytics training. With that said, allow me to teach you some very basic ways to interpret some of the information provided by the service.

One common mistake multitudes of people make when interpreting the reports section is the differences between page views and page/visit. Some just don't know what page/visit is and fewer don't know exactly what page views are. Very simply, page views are the number of times your visitors have viewed the pages on your website. Please keep in mind that page views and visits are also different as well. One visitor can view many of your web pages before leaving. Your reports can tell you that you've had one visitor and six page views. That tells you that the visitor saw six of your web pages before leaving. The page/visit metric is an average of all your visitors and all your page views. It tells you how many pages each of your visitors on average viewed before leaving your website. The page views and page/visit are very simple, yet very powerful metrics that will help you keep track on your website's performance.

Even though that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to getting the full Google Analytics training, the basic information I provided should have opened up your eyes to see the value that Google Analytics provides. Before you even think about using this service make sure that you get complete training so that you can get the most out of it.