This is all great, but the job is far from over if you want to really make the most of your site’s potential. Now is the time to dig a little deeper and start looking at your website’s analytics. There are any number of programs out there to help you do that – free and paid – but once you have those reports in front of you what exactly should you be looking at? Some basic pointers:

Bounce Rate – Most analytics programs record a bounce when a visitor only hits one page on your site and then leaves again. Monitoring your bounce rate – and which pages visitors enter and leave the site by – allows you to tweak your site so that the content is more likely to hold your visitor’s attention.

Session Duration – Are people hitting your site briefly and then clicking away? Or are they hanging around to see what you have to offer. By paying careful attention to which pages on your site hold the viewers’ attention best you can adjust the content of poorly performing pages to complement their obviously more engaging counterparts.

Conversion Tracking – If you want the visitors to your site to perform an action – such as filling out a form or subscribing to a newsletter – the conversion tracking statistics can tell you exactly how well that is going by showing you exactly what percentage of your visitors are doing what you want them to.

Traffic Sources – Keeping track of your traffic sources is crucial, especially for marketing purposes. Are the majority of your visitors coming to your site directly or from a referring site like a blog or Twitter? These numbers can help you figure out the best use of your marketing resources.

Most analytics programs will offer you a fairly large number of other statistics as well, all useful in their own way, but those above you should be checking on a daily basis if you truly want your website to reach its maximum potential.

If you are considering starting a home business do not let the statistics put you off, but make sure that you answer these questions  - the four W’s – to get off to the best possible start.

WHO – Who are you doing this for exactly? Are you truly committed to the idea of running a home business that enriches and empowers you or are you simply doing it because your bank balance is looking a little sad? If you are not sure who you are doing this for, you will have a very difficult time maintaining the motivation to achieve the level of success you desire.

WHAT – Do you have a clear idea of what you hope to achieve by starting a home business? Do you want to be able to quit the 9 to 5 rat race and support yourself with the profits from your home based endeavors? Or are you simply looking for enough extra income to have the ability to buy some of those big ticket items you can’t quite afford right now? Once you figure out what you are hoping to achieve you can set goals accordingly.

WHERE – As in where to start. There are hundreds of different work at home opportunities, some good, some great and unfortunately some are outright scams. Take the time to actually study what is being offered. How much is it going to cost you? Is it a one off, monthly or yearly cost? What is the actual product or service that you are receiving, and is there something else out there that may better serve your needs. Can you come up with some better ideas of your own?

WHEN – Knowing when the right time is to officially launch your new home business is essential too. Before you have that website go live have you double checked it for grammar errors, pages that don’t load or badly worded content? Do you have the proper systems in place to ensure that you can ship products to your customers in a secure and efficient manner ? Do you even have a good payment system in place? Do not open for business until you are quite sure you are fully prepared.

Whatever online trends come and go original, engaging content that informs, entertains and educates your potential  customers is essential. But how do you do that when you’re already slammed trying to  run a home business? There are ways to create a lot of good internet content with far less effort than you might imagine. Here are some ways you take a single article or blog post and make it work extra hard to promote your home business:

Youtube it – There are two ways you can turn a single article into a promotional video to upload to YouTube and other video sites. First if you are comfortable being the star of the show invest in one of the new FLIP video cameras and record yourself reading your article. These little wonders are practically idiot proof and uploading your final product takes just a few minutes.

If you are camera shy try turning your article into an attractive visual presentation using photographs or illustrations. Microsoft Windows Movie Maker is a great free way to create such presentations or a service like Animoto lets you create something even more spectacular for a small fee.

Podcast it – Take a longer piece (or string together one or two related pieces) and turn them into a podcast. If you don’t feel you have the technical skills to create an MP3 file and RSS feed by yourself (although the free software Audacity makes it fairly easy) sites like Utterli allow you to record using just your phone and then gives you the code to post tour podcast on your website or in a newsletter.

Taking audio one step further you could expand on your articles and turn them into your very own radio show at sites like Blog Talk Radio.

Tweet and Digg – Every time you create a new piece of content of any kind tweet about it, post it on your Facebook page and make sure you Digg, Stumble and Propel it to increase its visibility even further.

Pop Ups – Many home business owners seem to think that pop ups are great and that filling their site with them is a good idea. For many people though pop ups are nothing but a nuisance and a turn off (after all why are there so many pop up blockers available?) Some appear before the user has even had a chance to view the first page of a site, others before the average person can get half way through reading the first few paragraphs. It’s a little like that old fashioned door to door salesman who wouldn’t take his foot out of the door, annoying and counterproductive.

No Contact Information – Your potential customer or client is interested enough by the content on your site to want to learn more, or they have a real interest in the products you are selling but have a few questions before they proceed to checkout. They scroll up and down the page and cannot find any contact information. For many net savvy surfers that is an immediate red flag and they will determine that you are not someone that they want to do business with. It takes two minutes to add a contact page (like ours here http://myworkathomeresources.com/about/contact/) and it can make all the difference.

Demanding Contact Information – More websites are now demanding that a customer enter contact information before they can access a certain part of a site. I have recently encountered several blogs whose articles looked interesting but when the read more button is clicked a pop up appears demanding name and email address before you can continue reading. My instant reaction? Navigate away and find the information somewhere else. People are very concerned about their privacy. If they are interested in your products and services they will share their email with you, but do not force the issue.

Some people are born organizers, with a file folder for every need, a stack of pristine white notepaper at their side and a fully stocked and sorted office supplies drawer full of sharpened pencils and extra printer ink refills. Then there are the rest of us. But who has the time to clean when there are so many other things to be accomplished and not enough hours in the day as it is?

If the thought of trying to organize the controlled chaos in your home office over the weekend, your only time to break away from the place, depresses you then don’t. Take 15 minutes every day instead to tackle one area at a time. Begin with one stack of papers, one printer that has needed a new cartridge for days, one box of jumbled pens and pencils. Once you have achieved one task go back to work.

If you did that each and every day within a month you would have spent a day cleaning up your office without even noticing it. Then once it is organized you will probably need to only spend five minutes a day keeping it that way.

Some other sites to check out:

http://lifeorganizers.com/office

http://home.ivillage.com/homeoffice/homeoff/0,,7b1w,00.html

http://www.monkeysee.com/play/8052-how-to-organize-your-home-office