If you allow a customer to enter their credit card details into your website (even if you are not charging it at that time,) you should have that page, as well as the page that follows, in a secure (encrypted) area.

Your web host will be able to sell you an SSL certificate that is licensed by a company that most web browsers trust, and your web designer will be able to apply it to your website.

Keep in mind that you have varying options when purchasing an SSL certificate, but it is important to keep in mind that even the cheapest certificate will encrypt the data (the important part.) The more you pay, the more features they will have that verify the legitimacy of the company operating that secure page, and the more trustworthy you will appear to your visitors.

Do everything you can to increase your level of trust, and you will have fewer customers abandoning the sales process.

Your business has a backup strategy for its workstations, email, servers, etc. (Right?)

If your website has dynamic content (such as a blog or a shopping cart,) you need to ensure you have a backup of this data, too. You certainly don’t want to lose years of vital customer details because your website tripped and fell. Your web hosting provider most likely has backups, but you never want to rely on a single third party for something as critical as backups.

Discuss with your web developer options for backing up your website data to your office.

Business owners sometimes feel uncomfortable asking their customers to write testimonials, yet a complimentary word or two can go a long way in helping a business promote itself.

Following a what-goes-around-comes-around path, consider writing a handful of testimonials for businesses with which you work — suppliers, associates, businesses you recommend. A heartfelt, unexpected testimonial will make the recipient feel on top of the world.

It might also prompt that business to display your testimonial on their website, including a link to yours.

In the past, small businesses could use the excuse that it was too expensive to have a location map created that shows visitors how to drive to their premises.

Google Maps provides a perfectly acceptable alternative, with the added advantage of allowing your visitors to easily obtain driving directions from their location, and all the other nifty features that go hand-in-hand with a gadget from Google.

Ask your web developer to put one on your contact page today.

Search engines list web pages that include the keywords for which a visitor has searched.

To ensure your website contains pages that search engines love to display to their visitors, be sure to include words and phrases that your potential customers are likely to type into a search engine. You don’t really need to repeat them endlessly, or hide them, or put them in special tags — but it does help if each page focuses on a certain theme or core idea.

If you’re unsure about your customers’ lingo, flick through some of the initial emails that prospective customers have sent you, and common trends will jump out.