The need for your website to be easily navigated is enormous. Messy, disruptive and confusing sites are a huge turn off to potential customers. In other words: if you`re looking to make sales, make sure your website is easy to navigate so as not to chase off visitors at first sight.

Navigation (links for moving around site) is extremely important if you want your visitors to look at more than just your main page. If navigation choices are unclear, most visitors will just hit "Close" button, never to be seen again.

As a rule of thumb, main navigation is usually placed in top 1/3 of web page or on left hand column, and secondary navigation tends to be placed within bottom 2/3 of page, or on right hand column. Of course, this is entirely your choice, because, as with all rules, there ARE exceptions ;~)

If you want to build your website on your own from scratch, I highly recommend getting some free webspace to practice on, especially if you`re new to site-building. Try a few different ones and see which one is best for you, but keep in mind that to be taken seriously, you really will need to get your own domain and proper hosting for your site at some point in time.

Some free webspace hosts: http://www.freeservers.com http://www.50megs.com http://www.20m.com http://www.tripod.lycos.com

Of course, not everybody is an expert in hmtl, perl, php and things like that, so I`ve listed a few resources that you may find helpful in designing your first website.

Free website templates: http://freesitetemplates.com http://www.freewebtemplates.com http://www.templatesbox.com http://www.freelayouts.com

With growing popularity of Internet Marketing as an alternative or parallel path to Direct Marketing, executives are demanding a measure for Return on Investment (ROI). In response to these demands, iMarketingStrategy.com developed a simple to use Web Traffic ROI Calculator, built in Flash and 100% interactive.

The variables needed for calculating value of web traffic are straightforward and they are critical for planning a profitable Internet Marketing strategy. The Web Traffic ROI Calculator found on iMarketingStrategy.com web site is easy to use. First, enter your estimate of Projected Web Traffic. This can be done on a weekly or monthly basis. Next, enter following marketing variables;

Conversion Rate – The percent of visitors to a web site that typically make a purchase.

Average Order Value – The average amount a purchaser is expected to spend.

Average Profit on Sale – The difference between cost and sale price, or percent margin.

Customer Purchase Frequency – The number of times that a customer buys per year.