How to Make Your Website a Success
Written on July 25, 2007 at 2:35 pm
by Brian Muldowney
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The best way to make your website successful is to determine its purpose. In general, any small business website’s purpose is twofold:
- sell a product or service
- provide a means of support for that product or service
Whether you are a for-profit or not-for-profit venture, you are still selling a product or service and need to treat the information you are presenting as such. Whether you are trying to:
- provide a service
- sell a product
- present information on a topic or event
- make an announcement
- create a forum that raises awareness of a certain issue or issues
- deliver news on a particular subject
Or, as in most cases, do a combination of some or all the items listed above – your website needs to tell a story (not just state facts) that conveys the information above, that the visitor can relate to and relay that story to other like-minded individuals. Visitors will not only relate to the words used but also to the images used to support or elaborate upon the story. The story must be presented in such a way that it can be found – through both search engine friendliness and your site design.
For most small businesses that do not have name or brand recognition – your website’s main goals will be to:
- be found and indexed by search engines
- have prospective customers find you on search engines
- have those prospective customers visit the site and find the information they are looking for
- engage your company in the sales process
Once your website has done these four things, you can consider it a successful venture. However, like all marketing materials, it normally takes several visits and a period of time before the initial efforts pay off. It is always a good idea to discover how the customer found you and what factors played a role in the time required to complete the sales process. This will help you gauge how long you should wait before making changes.
Ultimately, your website needs to have information that is consumable by both search engines and visitors. A site not optimized for search engines is essentially invisible to search engines, and as a result, to your potential customers. On the other hand, without a good design, your site will get nothing but quick glances by visitors. People are bombarded with so many advertising messages that if they cannot find anything they can connect with on your site, they will just surf to the next site. Having a beautiful website that no one can find is like having a well-decorated store with great products in the middle of the ocean. A great website is technically well rounded and tells a great story.
The purpose of any business’ website is to generate sales in one form or another. So think of your website as an extension of your sales arm. A sales person that relies on a generic pitch or a prepared script is not likely to connect with many prospective customers. A successful salesperson tells a story that customer can relate to and believes to be authentic. Your website should do the same.
For help with creating a compelling story about why people should do business with your company, I would suggest reading:
- Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die – Chip and Dan Heath
- All Marketers are Liars – Seth Godin
- Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable – Seth Godin
Best of Luck in Creating your Story.
