As the online holiday buying season hits a fever pitch Thursday, San Francisco-based Web consulting and marketing firm Marketleap released their guidelines for any company wanting to improve its web presence. Call it a "ready-made" New Years resolution.

"Looking back on last year many bright companies operated not so bright Web sites," says Marketleap president Noel McMichael. "There is a lot of room for improvement in 2001 for many companies in terms of running smarter websites and improving investment decisions relative to qualified consumers visiting those sites."

For any company doing business online - whether pure Internet or brick-and-mortar, an important investment decision involves how much it spends to reel in qualified visitors to its site.

For example, a $10 million Super Bowl television advertising campaign, similar to the one Pets.com spent last year, is worthless if the company did not ultimately find customers buying at its site as a result of the campaign.

In order to succeed with a "New Year's resolution for running a smarter business website through measurable customer acquisition strategies, Marketleap says a company will need to evaluate its Web strategy.

* Search Engine Marketing - With millions of venture capital dollars going into ineffective TV ads last year, results continue to show search engines are a great cost-effective strategy for targeting new customers. In fact, Forrester research reports that 81% of people today find sites via search engine. Search engine marketing refers to maximizing website referrals from search engines using a mix of both paid placement and optimization.

* Performance-Based Media - Everyone is advertising on the web. We can glimpse a preview for an upcoming motion picture or get a new credit card by clicking on a banner online. What makes this new ad medium so unique are the new pricing models it offers. No longer are advertisers limited to cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) pricing. The closed-loop environment of the Internet now allows advertisers to purchase media based on performance. Imagine a closed bubble where consumer behavior is completely tracked. Performance can be anything from a click to a sale.

* Affiliate Networks - By sharing a percentage of a sale or offering a cost-per-lead, companies can enjoy ad placements that produce sales at a low fixed cost by building an affiliate network. By teaming up with affiliate technology providers such as BeFree, Linkshare, and Commission Junction, for example, companies are realizing a decrease in customer acquisition cost and increased brand reach.

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* Intelligent Tracking - Just knowing the number of visitors to your website isn't good enough, understanding what visitors are doing on your website is critical to your ongoing success. Employ technology that will help in smarter decision-making such as marketing tools like Coremetrics, Ad Relevance, and WebTrends.

* Internal Communication - Last but not least, stay abreast of all facets of your company's business by talking with individuals throughout various departments consistently. This produces a better understanding of your customer's needs and challenges.

Considering these New Years Resolutions, says Marketleap, most etailers should have a better holiday in 2001.