What makes a website successful?
There are many ingredients, here are the three most important.
Choose the right web design and development company – This may sound simple but there are many things to consider when you are choosing a company to build your website. Ask yourself these questions:
- How long have they been in business?
- Can they show you many completed websites?
- Can you get references from their customers?
- Do they ask questions about your business to define the goals of your website?
- Will they be there for you in the long term (Websites always need to be updated and kept fresh)?
- Will they return your calls or emails in a timely manner?
Provide content that will turn browsers into customers. To do this, work with your developer to determine:
- Who your customers are
- What would your customers actually search for (your developer can research search terms to determine which are frequently used and build content around them, referred to as SEO or search engine optimization)
- What will keep your customers on your site once they find it.
- What will promote conversions (turning a site visitor into a customer who contacts you or places an order on your e-commerce site)
Promote your website. In every successful business, marketing is a must. There is a wide variety of options and your developer should be able to help you with this (often there will be an additional charge for this service or referral to another expert). Some of the ways to market your site are:
- Social Networking such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn
- Adwords on Google and Bing
- Blogs and online articles
- Advertising on appropriate sites
- Print Advertising
- QR Codes
Analytics are a Must! It would be careless not to mention the importance of analytics. It is essential that you can track the traffic to your site, find out where it comes from, what pages were visited, bounce rate, and much more.