Important: If you don’t take time to see it, it won’t happen!

7. Think Big See big picture in everything we do. So much of our time is wasted dealing with unimportant things in our lives (what that person said or did, driver who cut us off this morning, and activities which don’t add value to our lives, etc.) that we forget about big picture. We were put on this earth to make a difference. We make a difference for our families, our communities, our organizations, and for ourselves. All of our actions must be put into action with this concept in mind. Think a little bigger today than yesterday, and you’ll create a better future tomorrow. Thinking big leads to great actions. Thinking small leads to small results. So Think BIG!

8. Set Goals The fastest way to fail in life is to not set clear goals. Set goals in financial, family, health, spiritual, and career areas. Your goals must incorporate SMART techniques or else it’s just a “conversation in park.”

* S for specific * M for measurable * A for attainable * R for realistic * T for time-based

For example, you might have a goal of achieving $2 million for retirement in twenty years. After doing your research, a SMART goal would be following:

“I will acquire $2 million dollars for retirement by 2024. I will do this by contributing $20K, or $1667 per month, to my various retirement funds each year. Of $20k each year, $2k will go to my IRA, and $18K will go into my organization’s retirement program.”

Remember most detail you can add, more realistic your goal becomes.

9. Positive Appearance Super achievers are very careful about their appearance and their movements. They know that looking good translates into feeling good. Billy Crystal, of Saturday Night Live and movie fame, once played a character that was known for saying, “It is better to look good than to feel good.” What he was really implying was “fake it until you make it” concept. In other words, if we are feeling down, then think positively and your mind will tell your body to follow suit and act positively. Also always dress part of an achiever. Model dress, actions, and behaviors of someone who is successful and embraces long term values of successful people. This will also tell your mind that I am an achiever.

Don’t let that be deciding factor on being motivated. You can easily distinguish those who are motivated from those who are not motivated just by looking at their appearance and their movements. The motivated move forward, onward and upward with confidence.

10. Helping Others Develop an obsession to help others. Share your special talents without expecting a reward, payment, or commendation. And above all else, keep your good deed a secret.

You know what, it you apply helping techniques to others, it will automatically come back to you tenfold in a number of ways. First, enjoyment of knowing that a special talent you had made someone else’s life better. Second, because you didn’t seek it, word will spread about you and your deeds. This will be translated into unexpected riches and opportunities. Third, you will gain a new level of confidence in knowing that you can make a difference. Super achievers find motivation and meaning by helping others.

You need to get permission from visitor to get that information. It can't be done with any tracking tools available. There is a very good reason for this and it's called privacy. If you or I went online and could have our names, addresses and phone numbers tracked by software, it could be potentially dangerous. Imagine if you were online and were talking in a chat room about going on holiday in a faraway land for next few weeks and your personal information could be gathered. The person who sees that information then knows when to go to your address and rob you while you're away. It's OK to track browser behavior because no personal details are ever tracked. I for one hope it stays that way.

Question5. What should one look for in web logs to determine conversion rates?

Web log files are a problem because they record everything. Web logs record every request to your site's pages from search engine indexes, to email harvester software, link harvesters and visitors. So first you need to filter out from log files information that isn't relevant to visitors. Then you're looking for unique visitors (not visits) or unique sites. Once you have that filtered figure, you have approximate number of visitors coming to your site, still not close to 100% because of proxy servers recording multiple visitors as one browser, but it's as close as you can get with log files. Then you divide number of people who complete conversion action by total visitors. That is your conversion rate. If you can get software that doesn't use logs like IRIS Metrics or log software that works out filtering like Web Trends, it makes your job much easier.

Question6. What factors have biggest impact on conversions on my web site?

The short answer is differentiation, target marketing, your site's relevance to your desired audience, measurement, experimentation, and most importantly trust.

Differentiation is first step in process. You must find a way to stand out from competition. It should start with domain name, and continue throughout your entire website's strategy.

Then in your content, your copy and your design, you must smack your target audience between eyes. You have to find out exactly what it is they want and answer wants and needs of that audience.

Relevance is hugely important, too. If you're running a campaign on Overture or Google with certain keywords, your audience should land at exactly right place after typing those keywords and finding your website. So if audience types "Red Vintage Wine" into Overture and your link appears, on clicking through they should be taken to page on your site talking all about and selling red vintage wine. They shouldn't land at home page of your website which has a small link to red vintage wine section and 5 or 6 other types of wine for sale. Measuring and experimenting is then key to improving conversion rates. You can't improve conversion without measurement unless you're making educated guesses or you're just plain lucky. So get a good measurement system, learn what it's all about, and test your changes. Finally and most importantly trust. You can't sell anything if your audience doesn't trust you. You can help them to trust you by prominently displaying your privacy policy, your shipping procedure, fact that you use SSL encrypted protection for forms on your site, that hundreds of satisfied customers have already bought from your store, that you make it very easy to find contact information such as a name and address as well as support via email. You could educate via your website with articles and ‘how to sections' or newsletters and instill trust over time. In short, your prospect must trust you to part with his or her money.

What's next? In part two of this series, we'll be looking at measurement software tools, pros and cons of logs versus ASP vendors, average conversion rates, why it helps to track visitor activity using software which is available, and what you should test and tweak to improve conversion rates.