Critical,Steps,e-business,Safe DIY 10 Critical Steps To e-business Safety

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10 Critical Steps To e-business SafetyCopyright [C] 2002 Shahnaz Rauf, snzeport.com Web site and e-business security is a very sensitiveissue. Some of the top brass in cyber-marketing havehired full time network wizards to work it out forthem. Giants such as Microsoft have set up specialnetwork security courses just to resolve such issues.If you had a brick and mortar business, you would bemaintaining a regular schedule and time sheets tomonitor your employees. Also you would be ensuringtight security by installing alarms, closed circuitmonitoring (video cameras), electronic cards etc.Online too you need to monitor your 24 hour salesperson...- Is he really doing the job you want him to do?- Is your eshop secure from the darker elements?- Who and what are your customers doing?- Where are they coming from?- Does your business have any loop holes?- Are your transactions safe etc?Yes you need to set up all your bells, whistles,snooping devices and other security measures. Here are 10 basic ‘must do’ steps for small homebased webmasters like you and me:1. Trade mark all your slogans, logo, ultimateselling proposition etc. by putting a TM sign [Forexample: The House of Viral e-BooksTM ]. This alsogives you a touch of `class` and creates a brandimage for you.2. Put a Copyright notice and date (Copyright [C]2002 Your name) on all your creations, articles,sales letter, web pages etc.3. Put a disclaimer - `use it at your own risk`clause for all your work- articles/ebook/website/atthe end of ezine etc. This discourages thoseelements who are not capable of acceptingresponsibility for their actions and need to pinit else where.4. On all outgoing auto-responder messages – putthe ‘this is an autoresponse’ clause to avoidany spam complaints. For I have experienced thatin the rush to grab something free, some peoplewill keep sending several emails to auto-responders instead of waiting patiently forresponse to arrive. Then of course, the basicautoresponder sends them an equal number ofresponses.5. Make your ezine/ list double opt in - statethis right at the top, also let them know thatconfirmation e-mail and computer IP address ison record. If you want to be even more secure,tell them that any false spam complaints will beprosecuted and damages will be claimed due todowntime- this will discourage any ‘happy-go-lucky’ individuals whose sole purpose in life isto mess it up for hard working, down to earth,honest people. [Beware: The double opt–inprocedure may reduce your subscriber count – butwill let you cultivate a very high quality listof people who really want to hear from you.]6. Monitor your website statistics – usually yourwebhost should enable raw statistics, but any goodsitemeter should be able to provide this information:- Who is visiting your website?- Where are they coming from?- How much time they are spending?- Which pages they are clicking to?- And whole lots more.Again this is very essential.7. Track Your links - This is the single mostimportant factor that can give an instant boostto your advertising efforts. you need to know:- Which ads are pulling?- Where are your buying customers coming from?- How many files/ebooks/software are being downloaded from your site?- Who is clicking on your links – IP address ofyour clients?- How much traffic you are sending to some one?Any good link tracker should be able to providethis information.8. Keep tabs on your web-host`s performance – Youneed to know:- When your website went offline?- When it came back up?- How many hours it was un-accessible?- How many seconds did your page take to load up?Here you may use the services ofhttp://www.internetseer.com9. Broken link monitoring - broken links can- Create a bad image/impression about you in yourcustomers minds.- Affect your search engine ranks.- Impact your business negatively.You may check these out using http://www.jimtools.com/here click on the ‘link’ button at page top.10. Who’s linking to you – Again if your webhostenables raw statistics, finding this will not bea problem – you can even find who is linkingdirectly to your e-book downloads etc. Otherwiseyou may use:http://www.linkpopularity.com/http://www.jimtools.com/ - and click on the ‘link’button at page top.------------------------------------------------------Shahnaz Rauf is a freelancer actively seeking writingprojects. She is also The Editor of The MonsterTwister– a Newsletter helping ordinary web ownersachieve extraordinary heights without losing theirshirts. To Subscribemailto:[email protected] Orvisit her website at http://www.snzeport.com----------------------------------------------------