5 CGI Scripts You Must Use to Turn Your Site Into a Powerhouse
HTML is great. But what really makes your site super powerful?
The Backend or the processes running in the background that
make everything on your website really click. And what powers
the backend? CGI Scripts.
Some of you may know what CGI scripts are and others may not.
CGI scripts are the key to creating interactive websites that
automate your online business. Instead of getting too technical
about scripts, lets talk about 5 powerful CGI scripts that every
website should have if they have any desire to conduct
E-commerce.
Number 1: First off, you must have forms on your website. You
should be utilizing forms for everything including retrieving
demographic information from your visitors to processing credit
card orders. You can also use forms to send contact information
so that your visitors do not have to use email to contact you.
The beauty of forms is that not only can you retrieve the
information you request, you can also include hidden fields to
be submitted with each form so that you know certain information
like what website the visitor came from, their IP address
(useful for fraud protection) and much more. Some form scripts
even let you send autoresponses to the submitter. So, for
example if someone fills in a form to sign up for a newsletter,
you can send them an automated reply thanking them for their
submission and including basically anything you want without
having to lift a finger.
Number 2: The next script every site should be using is a
"recommend it" script. This is a script that allows your site
visitors to recommend your site to their friends and contacts.
Do not underestimate the power of this little tool. The
recommend it script on our site at
http://www.goldbar.net/recomm.html brings in tons of traffic
and prospects that we may never have gotten on our own. The
power of referrals should never, ever be underestimated. It is
far more effective to have someone recommend your site to their
contacts then it is to advertise. I use the Master Recommend
script from William Bontrager, available for free at:
http://www.willmaster.com
Number 3: Affiliate Software. Without a doubt, one of the best
investments you can ever make if you have your own product or
service is in affiliate software. While usually not cheap it is
by far one of the best methods of growing traffic to your site
and exploding your sales. Many people advocate using a 3rd party
affiliate company such as Commission Junction to manage their
affilate programs. This is fine if you are a big company with a
huge budget to WASTE on administrative fees and obscure
technical charges. But, if you are a small to midsized company
and you want to utilize the awesome power of a strictly
commissioned salesforce sending you traffic and sales, you
would be crazy to not consider purchasing affiliate software
and installing it on your own site (or having it installed for
you). Some affiliate scripts are so advanced that you can click
one button on the administrative interface and send all the
months commissions to a check writing program and have the
checks printed out and all you will have to do is sign them.
Number 4: Follow Up Autoresponders: Without a doubt, everyone
should be using automated follow up mechanisms to:
A. Capture
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the email addresses of targeted prospects interested
in your products/services.
B. Send a series of sequential, timed messages that trigger
return visits to your website and turn potential onetime website
visitors into return prospects.
c. Remind customers about additional products and services that
they may wish to order in the future or add to their current
order.
These are easy to maintain once they are installed on your site.
All you have to do is write the email responses you want your
prospects to receive and then upload them to your server. Then
tell the script how long a time interval to wait before sending
the next message in the sequence.
An important point when using follow up autoresponders: make
sure they offer an unsubscribe feature so that the recipients
can opt out if they choose to.
There are many great scripts out there that you can install on
your own site. This will save you the monthly fees of using a
hosted service but if you choose to use a third party tool,
probably the best one is available from getresponse:
http://www.getresponse.com/?13323
Number 5: An error catcher. This may sound like a crazy tool to
include in this list but bear with me. How many of you have
tried to click on a link and found yourself on a 404 error page.
Most web surfers who encounter this error immediately leave your
site never to return again.This is probably the worst thing that
could happen to an internet business. What if you could create
a page that said, OOPS you reached this page in error but why
not visit the rest of the site? This is certainly more enticing
and if created properly can help keep a surfer on your site as
opposed to off it. On our site, we use a script that catches
errors and delivers a webpage apologizing for the mistake and
offering other links to pages on our site. We have saved many
visitors this way and we have also created many subscribers
and customers through this method. If you want to see how it
works, try this link http://www.goldbar.net/mistake.html
The script we used to create these pages is freely available and
can be set to email you when someone reaches a 404 page and also
help you determine if anyone is trying to hack into your site or
if a CGI script is not working. It is called errorbot.cgi and
can be found at http://www.perlarchive.com
These 5 scripts can make or break an internet business so why
dont more people use them? I believe they don't have a clue how
to install them. If anyone wishes to have CGI scripts on their
site but needs help installing them, you can usually get help
from the programmer or visit a site like http://www.cgiguru.com
who will usually install scripts for a nominal fee.
CGI scripts have been around since the advent of commerce on the
internet and continue to power the best sites. Even with new
technologies such as ASP, Cold Fusion and PHP on the rise, CGI
is the oldest and still the best. Why not get these 5 scripts
running on your website and start powering your way to new
profits.
About the Author
Marc Goldman, Goldbar Enterprises
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