Do you spend all of your valuable time answering emails, fulfilling orders and updating your subscriber list? Many small business owners get so busy running their business, that they have no time left to grow it.

The secret to being able to grow your business and still run it at the same time is automation. Automating key tasks, so that they happen without you lifting a finger, will allow you free time to market and grow your business.

Some examples of automation are:

• an automated ordering system
• automated follow up emails
• instantly confirming orders by return email

One of the best automated systems is already available with your Get Web Services hosting account, "auto responders!" Auto responders are pre-written emails that are automatically sent on your behalf, for example, in response to an email sent to a particular email address that you set up. Auto responders are also commonly used as "out of office" replies for when staff are on holidays.

Contact the Get Web Services team now to discuss solutions for your business.

Have you considered adding a shopping cart to your website to streamline your ordering process? It is critical that you choose one that is user-friendly so that your site does not become a victim of "shopping cart abandonment". Shopping Carts are useful for sites that have a number of products available, if you only have one or two items then a simple order form is enough for you.

So... What exactly is a Shopping Cart? A Shopping Cart is a virtual cart that collects the products that visitors to your site have an interest in purchasing, and shoppers can "add" or "remove" items as they please, just like with a real shopping cart. A Shopping Cart also calculates the total of the customer's order, including taxes and shipping costs. Then, when the customer is ready to make a purchase, the cart passes all of this information over a secure site to yoru merchant account, where credit cards are approved or rejected. Once the shopping cart hears back from the merchant account, it...

1. generates a customer receipt and emails it to the customer, then
2. sends you an encrypted email that contains the customer details and order information.

...And at that point, you can fill the orders easily and quickly.

Get Web Services provide hosting packages that support shopping carts, there is also a DIY shopping cart for those that want to do it themselves

If you want your website to be successful, it's a good idea to optimise your website on a regular basis to make sure it's got a good position in the Web's top search engines.

In order to maintain your ranking, you have to keep on top of what's happening in the rapidly changing search engine industry. The rules that affected your ranking yesterday may be meaningless tomorrow! Search Engines frequently change the algorithms they use to rank sites. As soon as the search engines become aware of a trick being used by "search engine spammers" to boost their site ranking, they figure out a way to catch them. If you are caught it could mean that your site gets booted off their listings in no time flat.

The Do's for Search Engine Optimisation

1. 1. Ask relevant sites to link to your site – the more relevant (or higher the Google PageRank) the better.
2. 2. Pay attention to keyword inclusion and placement – useful places to include them are:
   • In your domain name
   • In the title elements in your source code
   • In the meta description of your site – this is much less important than it used to be, but it can't hurt.
   • In your meta keyword tags
3. 3. Create content-rich "information pages" to direct traffic to your site – an easy way to boost the number of pages that link to your site is to create some pages yourself. However, you have to make sure these pages contain valuable contents that provide people with useful information.
4. 4. Submit your site to online directories – eg Open Directory Project, About.com, as well as smaller directories relevant to your product/ service.
5. 5. Multiply and conquer – create a "community" of related sites that link to each other. Why stop at only one information page? The more content-rich sites that point to your site, the better!

The "Don'ts" for Search Engine Optimisation:

1. Beware irrelevant links! Yes it's a good idea to get a lot of different links pointing to your site, but the search engines only like RELEVANT links.
2. Beware irrelevant Keywords! Search engines hate finding irrelevant keywords on your site, especially in your meta tags.
3. Don't "keyword stuff" your meta tags! Repeating your keywords over and over again in your meta tags will have you penalised by the search engines
4. Don't create "link farms". Link farms are the evil cousins of the "information pages" we discussed above. Also known as doorway pages, they usually only include a string of keyword terms with links to your site.