Web forms allow site owners to gather information about their site visitors. Web forms can be as simple as an email newsletter subscription box, or as complex as an advanced ecommerce checkout page. Here are some tips on making the most of your web forms.

Not All Web Forms Are Created Equal

Some web forms are extremely basic and only email forms to administrators. Others are integrated into databases and lead management software. Here is some thing to look for when choosing web form software.

Targeted Lead Generation

Web forms allow site owners to gather valuable information, including contact information, referral web site URLs, search engine keywords and visitor comments, and more. The results of these web forms can be posted to a database and emailed to administrators. Respondents to web forms could be buying a product or interested in receiving more information. The leads generated in this manner are highly targeted since the people filling out the request form will have seen your site and know the purpose of your company.

Keyword and Referral Tracking

If you use search engine marketing to promote your web site, tracking keywords from search to sale can greatly increase your ability to focus on the keywords that work. When a person navigates from one page to another, tracking software can carry certain data along. The carried data can include keywords and the referral web site URL. This data is then recorded on the order form or an information request form so that web site managers can determine which keywords and site are sending the most conversions. This allows marketing efforts to be directed to what’s working.

Self-Populating Database

Instead of buying a database of leads, or having telemarketers working to create lead databases, web forms allow site owners to have the prospects themselves populate a business database. In this manner, an entire database can be filled with people specifically interested in the company hosting the web form.

Email Marketing

Email marketing allows site owners to keep their companies in front of targeted audiences. Email newsletters can add value to web sites, providing a precious resource to site visitors. Informative newsletters allow site owners to send advertisements to highly targeted recipients that have opted-into the list. Newsletters can be sent at any interval, including daily, weekly monthly or yearly. By providing informative articles and/or discounts and special offers, many visitors to your site will be happy to opt-in to your mailing list. Sending email to mass amounts of people that have not requested information from you is generally regarded as spam and should be avoided.

Auto Responders

Web forms can allow automated responses to be sent, taking some work out of lead follow up. For example, if a product is likely to be used in 30 days, an auto responder can be sent to send a discount or reminder to the purchaser of the product 25 days from initial delivery.

Conclusion

Web forms are powerful tools for almost any business web site. Before investing in a web form solution, check your options and find a solution with all the features you want. Using advanced web forms can dramatically increase your marketing feedback and sales.

About The Author

Halstatt Pires is an Internet marketing consultant with http://www.marketingtitan.com – an Internet marketing firm in San Diego offering automated web site systems through http://www.businesscreatorpro.com.

So you have finally arrived at a stage where you to need to choose a web host to run your PHP & MySQL supported website. This means your website is dynamic, that is, it changes according to the feedback from your visitors or the data your MySQL database contains.

You may need PHP features in your web hosting for the following reasons:

Although there are numerous CGI scripts available (and many hosts provide these scripts for free), if you can, it is preferable to get your own script written to meet your specific requirements. The cgi scripts available at your web host are very generic in nature. If you have your own PHP script to handle your form, you can generate your own response when a visitor submits your form.

There are great many JavaScripts that can help you validate your forms, but these days many surfers prefer to disable scripts for the fearing on getting infected with worms and viruses. php script on the other hand a server-side script and nobody can stop them from running as long as the browser is loading the web page.

You can also send a customized “thank you” message to whoever submits the form. After sending the “thank you” message and emailing the form details to you, your customized php script can also save the submitted information in a php database.

[o] MANAGE PRODUCT CATALOGS WITH php & MySql DATABASE

You may like to generate your pages dynamically using data in your MySQL database. For example, if you want to maintain a catalog of 150 different wine bags, it would be arduous to maintain the details manually. Instead you can put information like price, shape, color, picture path, etc. in a database and then write a php page that, let us say, shows 10 wine bags at a time. The visitor thinks she’s visited 15 pages, but there is only one dynamic page that is sequentially showing the products.

Additionally, if you want your visitors to be able to conduct searches (just red wine bags) you can upload a php script to your web host that shows only the wine bags that satisfy the search criteria.

[o] PUBLISH A BLOG

You may need a PHP/MySQL web host if you are planning to publish a regular blog.

Most blogging software these days, such as MovableType and WordPress use php and MySql to generate dynamic content. In fact, WordPress has been purely written using PHP and MySql so that people well-versed with the php programming language can make their own changes.

[o] MANAGE AN E-COMMERCE WEBSITE

Choosing a php / MySql web host is a great way to go if you want to run an e-commerce website. E-commerce websites indisputably need dynamic capabilities such as updatable shopping carts and inventory management systems that can be developed using php and MySql.

As they say, when it comes to imagination and innovation, the sky is the limited. A PHP/MySQL web host empowers you to create as many web-enabled capabilities as you can think of.

ADVANTAGES OF CHOOSING A php / MySql WEB HOST

Advantages of opting for php & MySql web hosting are:
1. php websites, since they are run on Linux and Unix, are considered more secure compared to Windows supported languages such as ASP and .NET.
2. Lots of free php source code is available on the Internet. There are hundreds of forums that readily provide you assistance while you learn and develop websites in php.
3. Both php and MySql are free from License fees.
4. php & MySql web hosting is much cheaper than Windows supported hosting
5. Applications written in php are sturdier and easily scalable to various web hosting environments. Notably, php scripts can be run on Windows hosting but ASP and .NET apps do not work on Linux and Unix.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR :

Rodel Garcia is a freelance programmer and web developer. Owner and webmaster of this web hosting website. For details of this article, please go to PHP /MSQL Web Hosting

Every website needs a great web host, however when you are looking online for a host you may be overwhelmed with the wide variety available ranging from absolutely free to relatively expensive. How do you know what you need and what is the best choice? The answer to this depends on your business and whether you will have a lot of business or none at all, however you always want to have more space than you think you will need as well as the following options for a great web host.

When choosing a web hosting company you definitely want to make sure that they have 24/7 support. The reason for this is if you have a problem with your website, you need to be able to talk to someone and have them fix it immediately. As long as the host offers this type of support it should not be a problem. If they don’t, you might wait several days with your website down and not be able to contact anyone. Think of the customers you will be missing and all of the lost sales you’ll suffer.

You want to make sure your web host offers a generous amount of bandwidth in order to support your website and ensure it loads as quickly as possible. The more bandwidth means the more information that is carried and the quicker your page opens. So, make sure you have a web host with plenty of bandwidth to support your site.

Regardless of whether you need it now or not you want a web host that offers plenty of storage space in case you do need it. Give yourself some growing room.

When you have a web host as well as URL you will also want to have your own e-mail that ties into your company name. Find a web host that offers this as well. Most do, but some might trick you with fine print so be careful.

You may only have one domain name today, but the future holds all kinds of possibilities. Be sure you can add additional domain names if you need to.

If you have a domain name, but do not have your own name server then you will certainly want a web host that will allow you to store or “park” your domain name on their server for your domain to remain valid for an extended period of time.

While you have found a web host that meets all of your needs, be sure you also have a tool box that will help you manage your site easily and whenever you want. This is really important for you to be able to do, especially if you need to change something like prices, or other important information.

About the Author

Michael Turner reveals step-by-step how you can increase search engine traffic in his free 7 part mini-series. Grab it now at http://www.powertraffictactics.com/

Web statistics are one of the surest ways of tracking down a poor webmaster – because under no circumstances will that webmaster let you see them.

He or she will offer you “digests” (Heavily edited needless to say), will regret that your server does not have statistics installed (highly improbable), or will just say “I’m sorry?” and change the subject.

The excuses for sitting on this crucial source of data are many and various because Webstats alias web server statistics are the only cast-iron method of showing how well – or how badly – your website is actually doing.
Used in a positive fashion with a cooperative webmaster, web stats are the ideal fine-tuning tool for improving your websites performance and discovering who your customers are, what they are doing on your site and how you can help them to do it better.

This is going to be a simple journey through the basic terminology, so that when you are confronted by the data in question there will be no mysteries for you.

Generally there are two flavours of statistics programs, although others do exist. Either “Awstats” or “Webstats” should be preinstalled on your server and will only require accessing with the password for your hosting. The task they perform and the terminology they use is virtually the same, I just find the Awstats interface a little clearer.

How it works.

The server where your website lives is cleverer than you might think. It is aware of a number of factors about the people viewing your site. It notes where they are from, what pages they request or download, how long they stay on site and even where they are from.

Every web server does this.
For the paranoid, the server does not know your name and address – but it does know that someone from IP address 195.258-458-102 connected at 22.45 (server time) and requested the page “index.htm” which was successfully downloaded. Each request, its source and the result of the request goes into the log files on the server.

Awstats and the like read this information and present it all as easy to read graphs and tables using the following standard terminology.

What it Means.
Phrases like “monthly totals” you can probably puzzle out without may help! The slightly more complex stuff is as follows:

Hits.
Hits are for impressing the uninitiated. One page with four images on it makes five hits. This measurement is of very limited value and can be safely ignored.
Visiting our five-file page and hitting “refresh” three times will get you fifteen hits.
Fun – but of very limited value.

Files.
A “hit” that actually returned something from the server. (Not all hits return data – files may be cached on individual computers and so not need downloading or files may be missing and so not downloadable. Missing pages – for example – are “hits” but not “files”.)

Pages or Page Views.
Now it begins to get interesting. How many pages are actually being looked at (requested). 100 visitors viewing 200 pages means – on average – two pages per visit.

Unique Visitors.
The biggie. This figure counts the number of unique internet addresses that have been to your site.
Visit our five file page and hit refresh ten times – fifty hits, ten files (the images will not need to download twice), one unique visitor.
Exactly what we need to know, how many people have seen our site.

Visit Duration.
How long each “visit” stayed on site. The implications are obvious if no-one stays more that 30 seconds.

Referrers or Referring Sites.
Who is sending you traffic – this will include other pages within your own site, so no surprises if you appear to be sending traffic to yourself!

Search Terms and Search Strings.
What people who search for you are using to find you.

Browsers, User Agents, and Operating Systems.
This tells you what browser people are using to view your site. If you get a lot of Firefox users, for example, make sure your site is Firefox compatible.

Entry and Exit Pages
Where viewers arrive on-site, and where they leave. If everyone walks away from a specific page, ask yourself why.

What Comes Next.

So – get access to the control panel of your hosting right now.
If for some reason your webmaster cannot give you the password, no problem. Offer to view the stats with him (or her) at their office – their input should be useful anyway – but insist that you want to see them live on the server. (Make sure that its your server you are viewing too!)

It’s a simple exercise of logic to decode what is going on with your site behind the scenes, and it will help turn a website with the most lacklustre performance into the killer marketing tool your company deserves.

And that you already paid for!

Englesos is a Web and Graphic Designer working out of the Famagusta area of Cyprus. See more of his work on http://www.englesos.net or else at http://www.lookerscy.com