How much do you like being called "traffic"? For that's what most website owners think you are. To them you are just a number. They can look at their analytics and go "wow, traffic is up year on year; excellent". You can find all sorts of information across the web about "how to increase your traffic", or "easy ways to get more traffic" - including from "big guns" like Microsoft. You can even buy website traffic.

It's the same in the retail world for many shops; all they are interested in is "footfall". They want to know how many people are visiting their shop, in just the same way as online businesses want to know how many people visited their site. But focusing on traffic is nonsense; it's the wrong place to start your online business considerations.

In the 1960s British TV series, The Prisoner, "Number Six" tells us "I am not a number, I am a free man". We hate being numbers - just being part of "traffic", or "footfall". And when as a business you concentrate on traffic or footfall you begin to lose sight of one important fact: these are people, not numbers. Chasing traffic influences the way you think about your website visitors and then it affects what you do and how you treat them.

Consider shops that treat you as an individual; do you like those shops? Or do you prefer going into stores where you are clearly just another statistic? And what about websites that treat you personally? Do you prefer them to the sites that emblazon their statistics of the number of visitors they have in some little "badge of honour"? The sites that have their stats on show, or who don't connect with you as an individual have probably focused on numbers, on traffic. Whereas the sites that treat you as an individual probably start with the notion of connecting and making relationships.

The not so curious fact is that when you make relationships you will get the traffic simply because people like you. Whereas if you focus on traffic you are in a never-ending battle to win new people over all the time. The only way you can increase your traffic is to constantly focus on traffic, looking for tricks and techniques that get more people to your site. And true, you can get millions of people to your site using many of these techniques. But, rather like retail footfall, what's the point of all those visitors if they do nothing while there?

By focusing on website traffic, many businesses are not making as much money online as might be possible for them. That's because they need to generate even more traffic each year in order to make more money. But the people who create relationships are more easily able to make increased profits because the visitors who have relationships with them are likely to spend more because they like the company. In other words, going the traffic route is like being on a non-stop treadmill. You need to constantly keep battling away to stop your competitors stealing your traffic or to stop your traffic from diverting into other websites. But by building relationships you avoid all this.

Relationship marketing, of course, is nothing new. But when you focus your web efforts on traffic, you are relegating relationships to a lower level. Your traffic will become quality, money-making traffic when you concentrate on building relationships. And if you think that's a daft idea, take a look at what the likes of Dell and Starbucks do to build relationships, rather than traffic. It works for them.Oh, and it gets them traffic too. In other words these successful businesses get website traffic by focusing on relationships first and traffic second. If your concerns for your website are all about traffic, then try changing your stance. Start by focusing on the relationships and the traffic will follow. But by then you won't be calling these people "traffic", you'll be thinking of them entirely differently - customers, readers, people, community, call them what you will, but they'll no longer be "numbers" to you and that means you will treat them entirely differently.

Well, here we are, another week gone and it's important to remember that you have only seven days in which to make sure you have bought that essential Valentine's Day card and present. If you want the love of your life to still be the love of your life this time next week, don't forget that pressie...! And if you think that forgetting is forgivable because you are getting older, think again. It appears that memory loss as you get older may not actually occur; it could be that it is just socially acceptable to forget. Research shows that if you do memory tests in older people who are told they could be forgetful, guess what, they are primed to forget. In other words, the more you tell yourself that it's OK to forget things as you age, the more likely it is you will forget. You are essentially instructing your brain to give up trying to remember things. So, no excuses, you can remember that Valentine's gift this week..! Of course there's plenty more you need to do with your online business as well. So what's on this week's agenda?

Planning: What are you doing to make sure that your website is going to work on mobiles and smartphones. You may already have a phone-firendly website, but the number of people accessing the web using mobiles is increasing day by day. If your online mobile presence is not good enough, you will lose potential custom. With new multi-tasking phones like the Nokia N900 and web-savvy phones like the iPhone people expect your website to operate well on a mobile interface. If you are not already ensuring your website appears OK on mobiles, you need to start organising that soon. Around one in every 20 of your web visitors will access you site using a mobile and that will grow solidly throughout this year. There are several options. You can plan to have a "subdomain" which is mobile friendly such as "m.yourdomain.com". Or you can set up an automatic mobile version of your site. My mobile site is at "grahamjones.mobi" and this is automatically generated each day. All you need is a ".mobi" domain name and "Instant Mobilizer" from Domain Monster. But whatever you do, it's time to get on planning your mobile presence.

Content: Well, clearly this week your content could feature love, dating, relationships and anything to do with Valentine's Day. If that's too sickly for you and your readers then something worth celebrating this week will be on the 11th when it is 20 years since Nelson Mandela was freed from jail. And if you're still worried about your memory, this event is probably carved in your brain as a "flashbulb moment" of episodic memory. So it might trigger another article for you on important things in your industry that "stick out" as major episodes. On Friday, the Winter Olympic Games begins in Vancouver, so that might be able to suggest some kind of topical connection for you too or perhaps an article linked to what's going on in your industry sector in Canada. Pop star Robbie Williams is 36 on Saturday, if you want something lighter to write about. And if you want to write about being "in the shadow" of someone more famous than you, Jamie Murray - older brother of Andy Murray - is 24 this week. And finally, Sunday sees the start of the Chinese New Year - the Year of the Tiger, a time supposedly associated with generosity, humanitarianism, but also with rebelliousness and impulsiveness. Plenty there to write about...!

Tidying up: Is your website operating properly with all the links connecting accurately? As we build and adapt our websites frequently these days it is easy for links to get broken. Time to check all those links and make sure they work, correcting any that are broken. A good way of starting this process is to use the W3 Link Checker, a free tool that will show you whether or not your links in your pages are working. You could also use Inspyder InSite; this program will check all your links and find any spelling errors as well as show your keyword density for each page. Not bad for less than $60. I've already found several link errors on this site which I'm in the midst of fixing...!

New features: Many people might not want to visit your site every day simply because they don't get the time. However, they could be interested in your content. So, why not offer them a "weekly digest"? Using Zinepal you can automate the production of a weekly round-up of your blog or web pages. People can then subscribe to this using RSS and get your content as a PDF, for the Amazon Kindle or simply as an email. If you want my weekly digest you can get it here.

Reading: Social media is growing significantly and is a surefire way to enhance your reputation. But you shouldn't forget the offline world of public relations either; you need to integrate the offline and the online worlds in order to fully promote your business. Ping, by Alan Stevens, is an excellent book that shows you exactly how to do this. Written by someone who has been on both sides of the media divide as a journalist and as a regular guest on radio and TV, Alan's book is a no-nonsense and clear guide to ensuring you benefit from promoting your business effectively in the "new world" that is dominated by social media. The book covers everything from press releases that will get you in the local paper to viral video that will get you noticed worldwide. There are also several useful case studies and a guide on how to measure the impact of your integrated PR approach.

So, another week over; see you next Sunday.

Customers can either help you or hinder you. They can, for instance, let other people know about how wonderful you are, merely because they want to do that. On the other hand they can write negative reviews or blog posts saying how appalling your customer service has become. Clearly you want more people to be positive and helpful towards your business - but how? And why would they help your business for no personal gain?

Such behaviour - altruism - is commonplace. We like helping each other. But we only like helping people if we feel some kind of attachment or bond to them, or if we can understand their position. You recommend businesses to your friends and colleagues ever day; but they are businesses you like, admire, trust and so on. Have you ever altruistically helped someone find the right product using a company you detest? Every business depends on altruistic behaviour in the form of word of mouth. Or companies need altruistic people to help them with surveys, market research and so on. Goodwill is what keeps your business ticking over.

Generating that goodwill and the associated altruitsic behaviour does not happen easily, of course. You have to work at it. But new research conducted on both sides of the Atlantic shows that there is a "trick" you can employ to generate more altruistic behaviour. The study found that "mood elevation" triggered much more altruistic behaviour than when people were either neutral or somewhat depressed. "Mood elevation" means making people feel happy and positive.

In other words, it is rather simple. Make your customers happy and they will do more for you, out of the goodness of their heart. That might translate into increased uptake of upsells, more word of mouth, extra participation in market research. But whatever altruistic action you want customers to take, they are more likely to do what you want if you lighten their mood first. Depending on your type of business there could be several ways of doing this - humour, showing your charity work, doing something for them without prompting. In other words, if you think about the ways you can increase the mood of your customers - making them happy at specific connections with your business - then they are much more likely to help you do what you want (such as buy two instead of one, or complete an online survey).

Think about the companies you seem always prepared to help. It's a fair chance they make you feel happy. But think about the companies you just couldn't be bothered to assist; probably they just don't affect your mood at all - or even they may make you rather depressed. It's an old saying, but "keep your customers happy" seems to have some psychological backing now.