So your online store is finally up and running. Good work! Unleash the confetti and champagne corks — you deserve it. But once you're finished celebrating, there's still work to be done. Now you need to get your customers to actually visit the site.

    If your company is willing to spend the big bucks, you can get the word out about your site by using traditional advertising venues, such as billboards, bus ads, direct mail, radio spots, or even television commercials. You can also create your own high-quality banner ads and pay to have them placed on other websites that cater to your customer base. If money's an issue (as it so often is), there are ways to drum up free Web traffic. Some of these advertising techniques will work better than others, depending on what you're selling and to whom.

    How do you know if your advertisements and marketing tactics are working (i.e., making you money)? To be truly effective, your advertising needs to do more than simply attract visitors to your site: It needs to attract customers who buy your products. To pinpoint which of your marketing tactics are working and which aren't, take a look at your log files.