Attention all business owners! Do you know the answer to this question: Who gets to keep the website after you divorce your webmaster?

Just like in a marriage, it all depends on the pre-nuptial agreement (contract). Do you have one?

My personal disclaimer: Some of this information may be about legal issues; however this article is not intended as a substitute for legal advice. I am not an attorney nor do I play one on webTV therefore you should consult with an attorney familiar with the laws concerning internet and intellectual property.

Ok, now on with the story, the short version. . .

Here's the situation, for whatever reason the client decided not to pay their annual bill for web hosting services. Even though there were several attempts to reach the client the bill went unpaid for more than 90 days. As a result, the hosting was cancelled and the site was removed from the server.

Several months later the client sent this exact message: "you have my website and I need you to let me know how to get it back, like I said before I paid you money to build it so....? that money had nothing to do with hosting or anything".

Just because you paid for the development of your website does not mean you own it. There are Intellectual Property laws designed to protect the creator and to encourage the creator to create. If you hired a company they own the software development and website design produced by its employees. If you hired an independent contractor you must obtain a written "assignment" of the copyright in the commissioned work from them.

Most business owners unknowingly give their webmaster complete control over their business website. Even if you don't have a pre-nuptial agreement (contract) or own your website you can still maintain some control. While you and your webmaster are honeymooning be sure you can document the answer to these questions:

1. What software was used to develop the website?

• Exact name
• Version
• Software website

2. How to access the code?

3. Where is the code located on the server?

4. How to change the content?

• Graphics
• Text

5. How to create a weekly back up?

6. How to grant access to additional users?

7. How to obtain the master copies of your website design?

As a business owner, how many people realize their webmaster is like their spouse? Voluntarily joined for life (or until divorce), not many! Just like in marriage a prenuptial agreement (contract) is a practical solution to dealing with the risks and problematic topic of who gets to keep the website after your divorce.

Ten years ago you could include a hit counter on your website and announce proudly that your site was doing "very well" as soon as the number reached 100,000. The current process is not nearly as simple or straightforward. The internet works in complicated ways that have evolved to solve a number of small problems. Consequently, concrete statistics are often difficult to obtain. If you believe the number of online visitors is a reliable indicator to gauge the popularity of your site or the potential sales of your product, you should consider the following:

1. Hit - Every time a user requests a file on your site (a page, not a picture or link to another site) it counts as a hit.

2. File - When a file or page is actually sent to the user, it counts as a file. Files normally outnumber hits, but neither is very useful in measuring traffic. Any IP can request all of the files on your page several times in one hour without any actual involvement from the user.

3. Impressions - This is a concept that has existed in advertising for many decades. For example, a 2-page magazine advertisement counts as one "showing of a creative concept". This equates to one impression every time a reader sees it. If your web page contains five small banners, you could have 10,000 page views, but 50,000 impressions.

4. Page Views - Almost everyone believe this is the most important traffic statistic. This term simply refers to the number of times any particular page has been viewed. This metric can be useful. However, values can often be over-inflated and should always be considered in conjunction with unique visits.

5. Visits & Unique Visits - A visit is simply logged every time a remote IP requests one of your pages for the first time in a timeout period. A unique visit is usually defined as "one visit per IP per day", regardless of timeouts.

The above are all very important metrics, but understanding them properly is key. The best way to decide how your site's traffic is performing is by creating a formula. If you know what you are doing, you can develop your own formula. However, there are plenty of effective formulas currently available. A basic idea of how to evaluate your traffic involves reviewing monthly averages, unique visits and page views. This will give you an idea regarding how many individuals visit your site, how many pages they view, and how long they remain.

A basic formula from MarketingExperiments.com would be:

C = 4M + 3V + 2(I-F) - 2A

This formula shows that conversions are a product of motivation (M), value (V) and then the friction (F) elements minus the incentives (I). This will help you determine how many customers are likely to purchase your product. However, you need all the values first! You can purchase online analytic tools or download them for an upfront or monthly fee. All of them can return useful data to a webmaster.

If you are not an expert webmaster, or you do not understand many of the technical intricacies of web traffic, you should download Google Analytics. This is one of Google's new free products, and all you require is a GMail account and a web site. The program provides easy to read analytic data in a web-based form for your website. This can make it easy to determine which metrics would be most useful for analyzing your online traffic.

Michael Ehlert
RevUpYourWebBusiness.com

Before you actually begin your website you have to put a lot of consideration into things such as the domain name itself and the hosting company you sign up with. These decisions can have a major affect on the end result so ensure you do your research to get the best outcome.

Once you have found the desired domain name you have to get it registered, there are a number of companies that offer the registration of domains so how do you decide which to use? The first thing you should look for is their reputation, you would hate to deal with a dishonest company that doesn't offer the customer service you deserve. In order to find a reliable company you can ask for recommendations from friends and family or other webmasters to see who they use. The next factor you should look at is the price, don't be fooled for the cheapest companies out there. Just because they can offer a cheap service doesn't mean that it's the best choice, check for renewal prices and any other disadvantages you may be faced with so that you can be confident you are receiving the best deal.

When you have your domain name the next step is to choose hosting, you cannot afford to rush this decision as it will determine the results of your website. Put the time and effort in to check which hosts are reliable and offer great customer service. Never accept anything below 99.99% up time as you will be loosing money every time your website goes down. You then have to spend the time in order to get it back up and running as intended, loosing even more money. Browse through each of the different hosting companies, checking the additional features, benefits and mainly the price in order to get the best deal based on your requirements.

You can find various companies such as name cheap, triple and go daddy who can be the solution to all your problems. You can register your domains with them and buy hosting at the same time, this takes a lot of the hassle out of the equation as everything is in the one place. There are some advantages to doing this, you can often get a reduced price if you buy them both together. It will give you more time to focusing on your website and if you ever have a problem you only have to contact the one company. Ensure that you check out the hosting package before you buy it to make sure that it has the features you require.

With the benefits it does have it's disadvantages, depending on the company the hosting may not be the best option out there and you can often get various coupon codes to make things cheaper and by shopping around you can always save a great deal of money.