The following is a guest post by Jim Kukral.

Google knows this. Now you do as well. Easy always wins. Take a moment and picture your website or your blog or your product or service in your head right now. Now, think of Google’s. Which one is easier? No, you’re not a search engine, you’re probably a small business owner with a variety of products services, entrepreneur with a business idea, or blogger . But the comparison remains because regardless of what it is you do easy will always win.

So keep thinking about your Web business. Is what you’re selling easy to buy? By that I mean; when somebody comes to buy from you, or to simply get information from you like a phone number or to download a white paper… is it easy to do? Or are you making it too hard?

Picture Google.com again in your head. It’s pretty darn easy, no? There’s a logo and a big input box underneath it. You put in what you’re looking to find, and hit search and boom, you find it. Easy. Google understands that customers use them for one reason, to have a problem solved, and therefore, that’s what they deliver, without all the frills that other search portals like Aol or Yahoo! try to offer.

Your opportunity right now is to figure out the main one or two reasons people visit your website, because despite what you might think, your customers probably have only those one or two things on their mind when they visit you.

If you visit the home page of Orbtiz.com, you’re probably there to do one of a few things only. Book a flight, find a car, or make a hotel reservation. Possibly all three at once. But honestly, that’s pretty much it, right? I would bet that 99% of their traffic is trying to do one of those things. The same goes for you and your website, blog, membership site or anything you produce online.

What exactly are your customers looking for? You need to find out and find out right now! Check your analytics (I recommend Google Analytics, it’s free! www.Google.com/Analytics) to find out things like the most viewed pages of your website, as well as the most exited pages too. You may find out that 90% of your visitors are focusing on the free white paper download page and ignoring the other pages you thought were important. That’s great news! Now, you at least know what your customers want. And now you can make it easier for them to get it. You may also find out that a large percentage of your visitors always leave your website on one specific page, giving you the insight that perhaps they aren’t finding what they’re looking for, getting frustrated, and surfing away. That’s bad.

So what should you do with that knowledge to make things easier for your visitor, and better for your business? If you’re getting a lot of traffic to your free white paper download, go ahead and take that download information and make it stand out on your home page. If done right, you’ll make it as easy as possible for your visitors to get what they were looking for, and you’ll see even more downloads, and happier visitors because you didn’t make them work so hard.

Now, you may also find out that the page you really wanted your visitors to see is not being viewed enough. This could be the specials page on your e-commerce site, or the packages page on your consulting site or maybe your customer support contact information page. Whatever it may be, once you know what it is, that page obviously needs to be viewed more, and while you can’t force it down your visitors digital throats, you can redesign your page so that it limits the other choices that can distract your visitor.

Make it easy and simple, then win!

For over 15-years, Jim Kukral has helped small businesses and large companies like Fedex, Sherwin Williams, Ernst & Young and Progressive Auto Insurance understand how find success on the Web. Jim is the author of the book, “Attention! This Book Will Make You Money“, as well as a professional speaker, blogger and Web business consultant. Find out more by visiting www.JimKukral.com. You can also follow Jim on Twitter @JimKukral.

Do you ever notice how of all your customers, typically you’ve only got a few that cause you problems…but boy do they cause problems!

No doubt you’ve heard of the 80/20 Rule, which is actually another name for what was originally called the Pareto Principle.

The gist of the Rule is that 80% of your results will come from 20% of your efforts, and likewise, 80% of your problems will come from 20% of your customers.

The question I love to pose to business owners is, “How can you use this principle to your advantage in your business?”

There a few major ways you can use this principle to your advantage in your business:

1. Fire the 20% of your customers that give you more problems than profit.
   • Look, the headache you incur just to keep these people happy isn’t worth what little they bring in for you.  It’s in the best interest of your sanity and energy level to just let them go – they can go cause someone else problems.  You won’t even notice the fact they’re gone when you look at your balance sheet.
2. Focus on the 20% of your customers that bring in 80% of your profits
   • These are your good customers that are a joy to work with and that come back to buy from you repeatedly (which is what you ultimately need if you want to make any real money).
   • You’ll have more free time to service them now that you’re not messing around with the lower 20% that was wasting all your time and energy!
3. Realize that the 80/20 Rule applies to your top 20% all over again
   • What this means is that when looking at your top 20% of customers (let’s say there are 20 of them for easy math), 20% of those 20 equals 4 customers.  And if those 4 customers (20% of the top 20%) are responsible for 80% of the profit from the original 80%, that means those 4 customers are responsible for 64% of your total profits! (80% of 80% is 64%)
   • So if your net profits were $100, 4 customers will statistically be responsible for $64 of it!

Once you’ve identified your best customers, be sure to create incentives and preferred customer programs to keep those top 20% and top-top 4% happy, loyal, and evangelistic customers for life and you’ll enjoy higher profits, less stress, and an overall better quality of life.

Many times owners of small businesses have a hard time letting go of that lower 20% of their customer base, thinking that they’ll make more of an impact than they actually will, myself included.

But I speak from experience when I say, “You won’t notice a dime of it!”, and the peace of mind that comes from not having to deal with yet another email or phone call about issue #3,467 is a wonderfully liberating thing!

Try it – I promise you’ll love it.