10 Secrets for a high-traffic website - eBook review

This has clearly been written by somebody whose attention to style and syntax would indicate that English is unlikely to have been their native language. As such, their attempt at writing this book should be applauded. The book is published by inkthemes.com and is available as a 12 page pdf.

The first secret listed is website speed. While this is an issue, it should also be remembered that there are still some people using dial-up connections. To ignore dial-up users is to casually discard 10% of possible customers. It has been stated casually by amateur businessmen that if somebody uses dial-up then they're not likely to have the money to buy their goods/services which is akin to saying that because somebody's skin is a certain color they're not going to want to buy custard pies. As an example, I use DSL which runs at 3mbps download and 0.65mbps upload. That probably shocks some people. It works just fine for me and I'm thinking of getting a slower but cheaper service that runs at 2mbps. In some areas of the country there is no cable for internet nor any DSL available so people have to use dial-up. So, yes - website speed is important.

The second secret is minimising website plugins. This is pretty much common sense. Flash is one plugin nobody needs. Indeed, most Apple devices don't even support Flash and when last checked, Apple was the number one technology company. Flash slows down websites terribly.

The third secret is to use content delivery networks. Now I'm not quite sure what these are but they sound interesting and it sounds very much like they cache or mirror websites for easy access. It sounds interesting but also expensive.

The fourth secret is to give value to the customer by giving them opportunities to contact you. On the surface this sounds great. Then the problems surface - published phone numbers, email addresses and web forms mean just one thing - abuse. Spammers will abuse those contacts quite horribly and will render the option to be very unattractive. Twitter would seem to be the best option for contact though it's excessively restrictive with just 140 characters permitted. Few users will know about Twitlonger either. Realistically, is a website really going to be the first point of contact anyway?

The fifth secret: Leads mean business - grab more leads and do more business. Now the book seems to be meandering away from creating a high-traffic website. The previous point was beginning to lose the plot as contact information means nothing in the way of website traffic. Some sites such as Wikipedia have no contact information and yet are high traffic. This fifth "secret" involves putting a web form on the website in the vain hope that somebody will complete it in order that you can collect their emails in order to use them later. Pretty much the whole population recognises this a spam generating activity.

The sixth secret: Add a tap to call feature on a mobile website so that people can just make one tap to call you. I'm not so convinced about that since people are mostly fingers and thumbs with mobile devices. Better to make it two taps just to eliminate accidental calls. Quite what this has to do with generating website traffic, I'm not entirely sure.

The seventh secret - maintain a good habit of feedback. This section is where the grammar was so poor that it was challenging to understand what the author was on about. It seems that the author is indicating that you need to respond quickly to webform comments etc. This is more about service though and nothing about creating high traffic for a website.

The eight secret - use Facebook Like buttons and Like box plugins on your website. Now how does this square with a fast-loading website and eliminating time-wasting plugins? The author is talking at cross purposes. This again is nothing to do with creating a high-traffic website. It's more about pandering to people that like to play on the internet.

The ninth secret - share your experience with the audience. Basically, they're talking about running a blog. It takes them an age to say it but they suggest scanning the internet to see where people are having problems and blog about answers to them using your own products. If this is indexed well then this might generate traffic to the blog and hence the website. It has to be done well though and so few blogs are done well.

The tenth secret seems to continue the ninth. In fact the last several pages of the ebook are devoted entirely to blogging and how to do it.

Basically this is an eBook that sells itself as traffic generation for a website but which is really an instruction manual on how to write a blog with a few other things deceptively thrown in in order to make the eBook appear that it's fulfilling its description.

While I'm not going to condemn the book outright, I will say that it's a book on how to blog selling itself by using the phrase "secrets for a high-traffic website" which is quite likely to get readers for the book. What aim the author has is unknown since the book is free. Whether he's trying to use it to get traffic to his website is unknown but quite likely.