Think about the last time you went into Starbucks, Macy's, or Payless to buy something. I bet the experience you had during check out affected the next time you would visit that retail location. In fact, if the line was too long I bet you might have said forget it and left without buying anything.

The online shopping experience for the customer is equally critical. That's why Amazon.com invests vast resources to ensure that its checkout experience, in addition to the overall shopping experience, is as good as possible. If you haven't given your retail web site a serious review you should. You might even consider surveying your customers and ask them what they think. Halloween is over and the holiday shopping season is only a few short weeks away.

For example, maybe you are based in Austin and Dallas and over some weeks you see a lot of traffic coming from San Jose, California. Maybe this clues you in to a customer base in a new region of the country. This is just one of many reasons why it's critical to know the details about traffic to your web site.

It's possible now to track a lot more than just how many people are coming to your site. Google has a free web analytics tool which works really well. A new service from Woopra, free and in beta right now, also allows you to track visitors in real time (we recently covered it here).

Here's a quick reminder of five reasons to use a web analytics tool to understand your traffic (courtesy of Woopra):

1. You can evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing initiatives.
2. You need to know where your traffic is coming from, how often and why.
3. You need to know what users like/don't like about your Web site and where they are dropping off.
4. You need to know how much time people are spending in your site on average.
5. It's how you'll really get to know your customers.

Laura Leites, Assistant Editor, Smallbiztechnology.com

If your well designed newsletter was created for viewing on a relatively large computer screen, it's going to look a lot different on mobile devices such as a BlackBerry or iPhone. Even those web browsers, like on the iPhone, that do a pretty good job of displaying full web sites. However, even on these devices, the print is so small to make it not really practical to view content on these small devices.

BtoB Online writes If possible, publishers should do a reader demographic survey to determine how many people are receiving e-mail on mobile devices. “Make sure you understand the implications of that, both in the way you design your newsletter and in your metrics, too, because things like open rates are greatly impacted by whether the e-mail client strips images.”

If most of your readers (do a poll to find out) are accessing your content via traditional web browsers on a computer, then consider inviting the few readers who are accessing your web sites on mobile devices to subscribe to a text only version of your newsletter.

However, if your research shows that most of your audience accesses your web sites and other content on a variety of content in a variety of ways you should work with an online content developer (expert) to ensure your content is available on computer web browsers and mobile devices.

Whether you use Constant Contact, which I use, Vertical Response, Office Live, Cooler Email, iContact, or some other email service it's important to measure the affect of your email communication. Also, keep in mind, producing an email newsletter which goes out on a regular basis and is chock full of information is different than using email as a way to drive direct sales.

[Editor's note: On 20 October (NYC) Smallbiztechnology.com will be organizing its third Taste of Technology Small Business Series. This event will be focused on the importance of email marketing.]

The overall look and design of the newsletter is critical. You can have a very simplistic newsletter, that looks good. On the other hand you don't want to have too many graphics and colors to make it look like a kaleidoscopic piece of junk.

The information inside each issue of the newsletter is very important as well - actually most important. No spelling errors or grammar mistakes. You want to be short and to be point in most cases. Overall deliver what your readers want to read and in most cases, dispense rich information they can use.

Measuring the metrics of your email newsletter is critical. Knowing the most popular links in your email newsletter is good because you'll know what is most important to your customers. Analyzing the type of customers who opened your newsletter and read particular articles is valuable intelligence you can use to understand deep insight about your customers.

Placing these advertisement is not difficult. You just bid for the cost of the key word(s) and then place the advertisements. However to place quality advertisements that result in paying customers takes a bit more skills. There are several services that specialize not only in placing advertisements but that also help you reach local customers.

One of those services is Boomdas's Reach and Go.

Doug Neal, COO of Boomdash explained components of the service as follows:

Customers pay a monthly service fee and a cost per click. The monthly service fee covers the costs of multiple online ad campaign management and interactive marketing features such as call tracking and mobile phone coupons. The cost per click comes out of a monthly ad budget the SMB specifies which is allocated evenly across each month.

There is a Basic and Premium pricing structure. The Basic subscription fee is less as it does not provide any interactive marketing features such as mobile coupons. The key is that our service fee includes 3 simultaneous ad campaigns for each advertiser so that they get the best exposure.