5 CGI Scripts You Must Use to Turn Your Site Into a Powerhouse by
Marc Goldman
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 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 Discover the exclusive members only website
that will easily explode your traffic and increase your sales by thousands of
dollars!! http://www.goldbar.net/yoap/d.cgi?index-27
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