•Sales - Many small businesses view Internet as a powerful sales tool. In fact, 33 percent of small business owners use Internet to sell goods and services online, and 43 percent find sales prospects online, according to ACNielsen/eBay study. The good news is that your Website doesn’t have to actually process transactions online to enhance sales. Your site can provide valuable product information and take online orders, and then complete sale through mail or at a retail location.

•Customer Service – A Website can help you reduce many basic customer service tasks you or your employees handle manually. By owning a Website, your office staff will spend less time handling faxes, mail and routine phone calls about your products/services, operating hours, location, directions, etc. Just think: If an $8-an-hour employee saves just three hours a week, this could add up to more than $1,200 a year. On top of that, you’ll also spend less money on paper, printing, postage and advertising.

It is not a coincidence that more and more businesses are using Internet to boost their bottom line.

At height of one frustrating and particularly badly written install attempt I imagined myself as John Cleese with a garden gnome under my arm hunting for writer. Anonymity on internet does has its advantages in this case.

Now, I know you will be cynical and say that most of this is down to fact that many script writers are hoping you will pay them to install their scripts for you, indeed many do offer installation services. This really is a bad way of advertising your services. There are plenty of people who will have trouble with easiest installs and if you wrote clear and concise documentation which any user can see is genuinely comprehensive, you are more likely to secure customers as a result of failed installs.

During this laborious exercise we went through scripts of all kinds some of which include; online photo albums, content management systems, member login and authentication scripts, virtual postcards, email programs, hosting scripts, live helper, communication, e commerce, shopping carts, quiz and chat programs to name but a few. We also purchased 3 scripts. Only one of those free scripts was simple to install and marginally better than free versions available. Paying money does not necessarily mean better service. In fact one photo album provider charging around $30 dollars per script provided bad install information and less than helpful advice, immediately deleting anything that mentioned install problems from his forum.

It has been an experience. If none of this has meant anything to you and you have no idea about scripting or installing scripts then consider yourself fortunate and leave it to geeks if you are able.

For those of you that regularly dive into scripting for your websites – here is a useful tip that saved us no end of time and frustration. The minute you come up against bad scripting, bad documentation or difficult to install scripts – trash them, ditch them and move on. There are plenty of others. Leave tricky badly written stuff to real hardcore freaks.