This may not be true in baseball, but this statement is always true on the Internet. Let me explain...

I'm here to tell you, there is a tidal surge that will drown those who don't learn to surf ahead of the wave. One of the biggest problems I have to overcome is changing peoples mindset: Many business and agency owners put up a site and then think the name of the game is 'how many hits can I get'.

It is not! The goal is 'how much money can you make'! Hits are worthless, only sales (Home Runs) count. The reason we are all focused on the wrong numbers comes from several factors:

1) Hits are easy to measure.
2) It's a 'techie' thing - they have no concept of marketing.
3) It's keeps business owners from looking at the real issue:
Making Money-- which most web page designers have no clue about.

Many would have you believe that getting high rankings in 850 search engines will guarantee your success. It may guarantee you a lot of hits, but success? No. Even though there are over 1,000 search engines, just 9 of them generate over 95% of the traffic - so why waste time with the other 991?

There's hardly a day that goes by that someone doesn't brag to me how many hits they had last week "I had over 127,000 hits on my site last week - isn't that great?" I then ask, "So how many sales?"

The reply is usually, "Oh, well the site is too new for that, but they'll come "

Big Deal! I may have only had 1,200 hits, but if I made 32 sales, who's further ahead?

If you just want high numbers of hits, that's easy. Code the keywords of your page with words like: free, nude, naked, sex, and even free sex. I guarantee you'll get a lot of traffic. But so what? It's not who you want.

The other BIG mistake I see people make is driving traffic to their site when they haven't thought about conversion. Just because you get 10,000 visitors doesn't guarantee you'll make eleven one sale. In fact, i know of several folks that decided to "experiment" with Google Adwords. Now Adwords can make you a lot of money very quickly, but ONLY if you know how to use it and ONLY if you know your site can convert visitors into customers at a rate you need to be profitable. Otherwise, Adwords is the fastest way i know to max out your credit card and go broke.

Now in all fairness there is one reason you may want a lot of hits That is if your goal is to sell or rent ad banner apace on your site. Then you need lots of hits to use as a selling feature. You see, the folks you'll be selling to still don't get it. They think the more hits you get, the more they should pay for their banner space on your site. Dumb. Real dumb.

So what's the answer? Simple. Content is King. Just as with any well-crafted sales letter or advertisement; what you say is infinitely more important than anything else. It's more important than bright colors or little dancing chipmunks. When designing your site remember your goal is to make sales, get appointments or lead generation. Keep this in mind when coding your pages too. Those keywords are extremely important in bringing the right visitors to your site.

I found an easy way to keep my goals in mind when I write. I simply jot down what I call my MDR, or Most Desired Result, on a sticky note. My MDR is simply the answer to this question: When the prospect is done reading this, what action do I want them to immediately take?

It may be that I want them fill out a form, send a check, call for an appointment, call and listen to a pre-recorded message, anything. If you can't boil your MDR down to about 3-5 words, you haven't got your focus yet and should NOT start writing.

Once I have my MDR on my sticky note, I stick it on the right side of my monitor about 2/3 of the way down (this is where it has been proven, through studies, that your peripheral vision will pick it up most often). Now I write my ad or letter - And that's what a web page is - an ad or letter that the reader will view on a computer monitor. If you don't understand that, you're not ready for a web site.

In fact, one of the first things I do when working with a business that wants a web site is ask to see samples of their sales letters and ads. If they hand me a brochure, I advise them to learn more about direct response advertising and marketing before they invest any time or money in a web site. After all, that's what a web site is: Just another form of direct response marketing.

See you on the Net!