Often times business owners fall into the same trap and select a design which really doesn't match their business market niche. For example let's take a fictitious company called "Classic Restoration Parts." CRP has been doing business for over ten years and has a strong customer catalog list of active buyers. They have experienced a slight downturn in sales and believe that they are losing a significant source of revenue that is going to competitors on the Internet. Not wanting to lose anymore sales the management team decides to expand and needs to out source a web designer. Though they aren't necessarily a home business they are family owned and represent an interesting example for purposes of this article.

After considerable research and due diligence they select a web design and designer with lots of flash animation and state-of-the-art technique. After several meetings and emails the design is up and running. The web designer made sure that the site was fulling compliant with Internet standards and ensured good positioning with search engine optimization tactics within the site.

Several days pass and the site is indexed on the major search engines, Google, Yahoo and Bing. The site designer reminds them that it takes weeks even months to be ranked for a single keyword or keyword phrase, however a year has passed and they are not enjoying any appreciable increase in sales and consequently no payback for the cost of the site design and build.

At this point the question is asked, "should we abandon any further investment into the site?" The answer is a resounding no!

What they need to do is understand their internet customer base better. Here's what I would suggest as a consultant.

Immediately install site tracking software. This can be accomplished for free by using Google(r) Analytics which is part of creating an AdWords(r) account. This is pretty simple stuff. You get coding from Google and place it on every page of your site. Create a keyword Advertising program through Google or Yahoo Marketing. This will help to drive traffic to the site and at the same time should help to defray some of the site costs. Allow enough time to analyze site visitors. Another words, wait.

Let's say that by doing the above there is a large enough of a sample to analyze. What did we find? There were hundreds of clicks that landed on the home page or the specific landing page but were abandoned right there. They never bought. The sample showed that many viewers had lower resolution screens, older browser and older flash versions. This is important because of the flash animation on your site. Also the new versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome have many of these supporting features built in. Viewer loyalty was low (They didn't come back) and average site time was very low as well as page depth (the total number of pages viewed.) There was a high level of abandonment for those that did want to buy, but got to the shopping cart and then aborted before finalizing the sale. ( a form of buyers remorse)

This is unusual, especially for such a small niche to happen.

Why did so many viewers drop out after viewing the home page? Let' see if we can make some sense of it all. You know that buyers want your products because they have bought from your catalog very successfully. Then why didn't they buy from your site?

A possible and likely reason for some of the short stay issue could be in the site design. Sometimes simple is better. The reason is not everyone's computer has the latest operating, Internet and Flash software. Your site might not show well in older browser versions and consequently any scripting may cause additional problems. This is not to say that your potential customer is backward it may just mean that they have older computers and operating systems that won't display well. Many viewers get spooked right away if there are any oddities on a site.

Older PCs or Macs also can be the culprit. The more sophistication on a site the more horsepower you need to load it. Remember your window of opportunity is only a few seconds and then your potential customer is gone. What can you do about it?

Creating a simpler site is one very easy method of opening up your potential Internet audience.

Make sure you are set up with some analytical software to evaluate your site. Google Analytics is a great choice because it can tell you so much about your viewers and buyers. It even has a function to understand all of the steps someone took before they bought one of your products. This is done through a function called goals and it is a powerful feature to this free service.

Working smarter, not harder always pays off when you use tools to help analyze your website traffic. Site analytics isn't optional it's required to become successful.