5. Use of sitemaps. Sitemaps not only increase rankings and placement within Search Engines, they effectively give visitors a "guide" by which to view site, and eliminate confusion on larger sites, such as e-commerce sites. A site map is what its name implies, a road map for your visitors to follow while they are on your site. It's also a road map for Search Engines, so a site map serves two very important purposes on an e-commerce site.

6. Content that is keyword rich and well-written will aid in placement within Search Engines, and keep visitors on a site long enough to purchase. Horribly written sites drive visitors away, while lack of keywords negatively affects placement and rankings. The writing on any site is FIRST IMPRESSION potential customers have of you and your products or services, so paying strict attention to content usually engenders additional sales.

7. Keyword rich title tags will increase traffic overall, and more traffic, of course, means more sales. Title tags help with placement and rankings. Appropriate keywords should also be used for linking internal pages, as this also helps with rankings. Since e-commerce sites are for most part, larger than personal pages, or other types of sites, internal linking does lead to more effective initial indexing by Search Engines also. Care should also be given to "alt" tags that surround all pictures of products, as non-optimized "alt" tags can lead to poor rankings and placement.

8. E-commerce databases and purchasing procedures that are user friendly. Nothing is more frustrating to future buyers than databases or purchase procedures, that are difficult to use, or that keep going down throughout process of purchase. A database and purchase procedure, should be easy to use, yet reliable enough to prevent lost sales, or lost monies from sales.

9. A security feature that ensures visitors that personal information is "safe and secure" within confines of Web site and that reassures them that their personal information will not be shared nor sold. This is a major concern of online visitors, as Web is such an "anonymous" type of medium, so any "assurances" as to safety and security will benefit sales.

10. A thank-you page that is presented immediately upon ordering. This ensures "return purchases" as being courteous and polite is always in style and does leave an overall good impression on visitors!

All in all, an e-commerce Web site is significantly different than a personal Home page, or pages of a non-profit organization. The focus of design and navigation, as well as all other aspects need to focus on primary purpose of site, and that of course, is SALES!

The site remained down consistently, as well, over next few weeks, forcing Katheryn to sign up for a different hosting plan with a different host, and also re-register domain with another registrar. Luckily for Katheryn, registration of site was in her name, and a new name did not need to be purchased. At time of import, however, previous "problem" host refused to initiate a transfer, claiming that contract remained intact, and therefore site could not be transferred. The new hosting company had to "maneuver" site onto it's own servers without cooperation of previous company, costing client more time and money than was necessary.

For months afterward, Katheryn was billed repeatedly by previous hosting company for monthly hosting, even though a site no longer existed on their servers, and they were in essence hosting "air" at this point. Copies of all correspondence had to be sent to billing service to "dismiss" this recurrent billing, which was only option left to Katheryn at this point.

I'm sure there are many people like Katheryn who at one time or other have gone through such ordeal.

Some possible methods of avoiding "trap" of packages such as this:

1. Read all paperwork and contracts thoroughly. The fine print is indeed, very "fine" sometimes, for a reason, and reading everything thoroughly will save frustration and misunderstandings later.

Above all, make sure that registration will be done in "your name", as loss of a popular name, with a large amount of traffic, is a HUGE loss. Or better still, register your domain name yourself. With so many online domain registrars, it's very simple to register a domain name online. The only thing you need to do once you have bought a hosting package is change "name servers" through control panel provided by your domain registrar.

If at all you are not satisfied with your hosting company and would like to shift to a different company, simply change name servers to point to new company. That's it!

2. Make sure there is a contact phone number and physical address for correspondence with companies if need should arise. As in case of Example #1, lack of a phone number and physical address was detrimental to effective correspondence and resolution.

3. Take time to research different plans and different companies. If at all possible, ask to speak to some of their other clients to ensure that they are indeed sensitive to needs of their own customers and are flexible enough to adapt to changes in a site over time.

4. Take time to correctly ascertain your own needs and needs of any site you'll be building. The package needs to "fit your needs" explicitly.

5. If at all possible, use different providers for each stage of a Web site: hosting, domain-name registrar, site building. It does take longer to get a site up and running with this method, but overall control that you will have over site is well worth extra effort, usually. If one provider proves to be a disappointment, it is easier to replace one service, rather than try to replace everything at once.

As you can easily see, sometimes "time saving" strategies are not really that, and can lead to heartbreak and headaches. As with everything else, "slow but steady" wins race, and it does pay to take time to initiate each stage of a Web site individually.