A question I often ask my target market is, "what's your biggest challenge with building your business online?" And one answer I get frequently is this:

How do I make my website earn money?

If you've got a business online, then it's likely you have some sort of web presence. Perhaps it's a one-page 'sign up for my list' kind of site, or a full-blown brochure site with a menu of choices, or maybe your site is in the form of a blog. Regardless of what kind of site (or sites) you have, if they're not doing what you want them to - and since we're in business, ultimately that means making some sort of a profit - then it's time to make some changes.

But how do you REALLY know whether your site is working or not? Here are four strategies to test and track your pages to know what needs fixing:

1. Let the numbers speak

I'm sure if the sky was the limit, you'd hire the most expensive web designer with the fanciest tools to create the most spectacular site imaginable for your business - and someday you just may do that.

For now, though, even an ugly site can make money. I can think of at least two sites right now that I personally think are not that pleasing to the eye, yet I know they are raking in the bucks each and every month, year after year.

So don't get caught up in having the most polished and professionally looking site. Focus more on having the pieces in place that will bring you the cash, too.

2. Give your site only one job

Think of each page of your website as a separate entity with one main purpose. It may be to sell something, or to sign up for your list, or to get people to call you for an appointment. Whatever it is, make it clear that that one thing is the action your visitor should take from being on that page.

3. Track your numbers

Most web hosts offer statistics that you can use to watch your numbers, or there are other web stat programs that you could use as well (such as Google Analytics). However you are keeping an eye on your numbers, you should be looking for two things: how many people visit your site and how many people take the action you want them to take.

From those two numbers, you can figure out your conversion rate, which tells you how many of those visitors took the action you wanted them to - like sign up for your list. If you make small changes to your page AND watch these numbers at the same time, you'll be able to tweak things to increase your conversion rate.

4. Make one change at a time

This is a very effective way to increase the conversion rates on sales pages and sign-up pages. Change just one thing - for example, the headline - and watch your numbers. Compare those statistics to your previous ones and decide whether or not to keep the change. (You can also do this via a split-test in your shopping cart, where the software does the number crunching for you.)

I see so many sites that try to be all things to all people by offering everything under the sun in too small a space - a website - and all that does is confuse people and encourage them to click away. Remember, 'a confused mind always says no', so always go back to the main questions when considering making changes to your website: What's the purpose of this page? What is the one thing I want my visitor to do here? And then design your copy around the answer. Keep it simple and you'll get better results every time.

Reusing pieces of HTML code is a common way of making web sites (or web applications) more consistent, reliable, and more manageable. Even a small web site consisting of perhaps 20 or 30 web pages can benefit from reusing code for header and footer sections, for example. If the same header or footer is used across all the pages on the site, it makes sense to put the header and footer code in separate files, and then call those files to insert their contents where required.

PHP offers two statements that can be used for inserted the contents of one file inside another: include() and require(). These two statements are virtually identical, with the only real difference being that if require() fails, it gives a fatal error, whereas if include() fails it just gives a warning. For this reason I tend to use the include() statement as it just seems slightly more friendly.

So, to include the contents of a file called header.inc inside a web page called index.php, you would just need to insert the following line of code (wrapped in PHP opening and closing tags) inside index.php.

Include 'header.inc';

As PHP takes no notice of the extension used for the included file, you can use whatever extension you want to. Be careful though, if you put passwords inside an include file with a .inc extension, they will be visible. You can get around this by putting include files that contain sensitive information outside the document tree to prevent people from browsing to them.

In Part 2 we'll look at the use of functions when developing web sites and applications.

How's your website, then?

I'm not asking whether it's a good site or not, but what its performance is like. Is it slow to load? Does it have problems with certain web browsers? Occasionally you'll find that code working perfectly on, say Internet Explorer, doesn't work with Firefox. And vice-versa. Any coding problems?

How should I know? Who... who cares? I hear you ask.

Because it's important. You only have seconds -- tenths of seconds, even -- to make an impression on people who come to your site. If the site isn't working, has dead links or some old code that doesn't work and leaves the site with blank areas, you can bet your life those lovely, potential customers will click away at the drop of a pixel. And more than likely they'll be clicking away to the welcoming site of one of your competitors.

Wake up and smell the Mugicha! After reading this post you no longer have any excuses for not knowing. There's a website I often turn to when I want to see how my own site is doing, performance-wise. It makes for uncomfortable reading sometimes, because it doesn't hesitate to tell me stuff I don't particular want to hear -- the site's too heavy, too many images, too many elements, you've failed at life, you're a bad, bad person... et depressing cetera. But it's well worth it.

I have no connection whatsoever with the owners of the site and this isn't an affiliate link, so click in confidence. Here it is:

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

Put in the full address of your website and have a look at what it says. Pretty eye-opening stuff, eh? You didn't realise it was that bad, did you?!

I'm not particularly interested in contacting the owners of the site to ask for their optimization services, but the results I get when I check my site are very interesting. Useful, too. Oh, and completely free. Check it out.