These Factors Can Make or Break a Sites’ Success

What does it take to create a successful website? For most online sites, it’s going to take a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to make their business work. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to make a business succeed. In fact, we help many companies in our free webinar training develop a useful business model and website that brings in a substantial income. A successful website improves over time and is measurable. In time, a website should also be the number one competitor in your industry. Focus on these critical factors for a website to succeed.

Test your assumptions

After developing your website, down the road, Nomiscom Web Design says it’s a good idea to test your hypotheses. How do you go about doing that? Well, smart online businesses perform split testing and allowing visitors to offer advice on how to improve your website.

Now, the tricky thing about choosing and implementing a business model on a website is that any initial decisions – for example, which products will be stocked and how they’ll be displayed on the site – must be made based on the web designer’s intuition.  And while this is a fine place to start, assuming that you’ve automatically hit on the correct combination of product, offer, marketing pitch and creative display is a quick way to doom your site to failure.

Because one person’s opinion is rarely entirely accurate, smart webmasters use the process of split testing in order to demonstrate conclusively which changes make their sites as effective as possible.

If you aren’t yet familiar with the process, split testing involves randomly deploying two different versions of a single web page on which one or more variables have been altered slightly, in order to determine which page version leads to more conversions and better website results.  Split tests can be carried out using both A/B and multivariate protocols and can be easily managed using a free program like Google Analytic’s Content Experiments.

And while all of that might sound technical, smart webmasters recognize the opportunity that can be found in allowing visitors to tell you which of your design changes are most effective at increasing conversions.  Learning how to implement these tests correctly can take time, but the end results are well worth your effort!

Earn the trust of your audience

Search Engine Journal mentions how vital it is to earn the trust of your audience. When your audience responds to your brand and supports you by purchasing your products or investing in your services, that’s a good sign that you’re headed in the right direction.

Be clear and transparent in what you are offering and what you want your audience to do.

Know what motivates them and what you’re strong at.

Leverage that.

Too often websites lack the emotional or credibility connections needed to earn trust and the sale.

A prime example that I see often are ecommerce sites (and even service company websites) that lack an About Us page that has substance.

Users want to know who they are doing business with and not that you’re just another commodity site in the space.

If you can’t put names, pictures, culture, philosophy, or some type of story on your website, you’ll lack the ability to state what you’re about.

Customers care about your intentions.

Even cost-conscious shoppers simply looking for the lowest price need to feel like you’re a legit business before plugging in credit card details.

Professional design

Having a professional model, according to Nomiscom Website Design, is imperative if your website is going to do well on the web. Think about it — if you don’t have a professional design, it’s going to be more challenging to keep visitors on your site and also prompt them to invest in your service or product.

It’s not enough to have a website. If the design is not professional, then it’s doing you more harm than good.

Your website should have a consistent design. Don’t have too many colors or too many types of fonts used.

As this will make your website confusing. You want it to be easy to use and easy to read.

The colors used should reflect your brand colors. That way you will build more brand awareness.

The consistent design means that your website doesn’t have a high learning curve. Like your navigation is consistent throughout the website.

You footer offers some important information throughout the website, and it doesn’t change on every page.

But all this doesn’t mean your website should be dull. It should be creative, but be aware what are the expectations in your industry.

It’s not the same thing to design a website for a Law Firm and a Tattoo studio. Law firm website has to be more serious and businesslike.

While tattoo studio website can be more loose and playful.

You can’t lose if your layout is simple and easy to read. Make sure your website and especially your homepage is free of clutter.

It’s Important that your homepage has a clear message and represents your services and products in an interesting manner.

Single Grain adds to Nomiscom Website Design’s thoughts on how vital website design is. Professional designs mean everything, which is why if the budget allows for it, you should spare no expense on creating a professional and attention-getting website.

Sorry, but it isn’t 1996 anymore.  People have always judged books by their covers and these days, they’ll judge your website by its appearance as well.  So if your pages look like they were built on Geocities and last updated when AOL still shipped connection CDs to consumers, it’s time for an image update!

Now, this isn’t to say that your website’s appearance is the only thing that contributes to its success.  Certainly, there are still dated-looking websites out there that generate traffic and revenue for their owners.  But why – with the huge variety of website development tools available today – would you want to set your website up with such a disadvantage from the start?

If you aren’t a professional web designer and you don’t have thousands of dollars available to hire one, you can still make use of programs like WordPress and other template design services that’ll give you a professional looking website at a fraction of the cost of having one custom built.  Look into any of these options when building or redesigning your website in order to prevent your site from failing on the basis of its visual appearance.

Brand or name recognition

You know you’ve made it when you have a brand or name recognition. Don’t get discouraged if this may take some time. Entrepreneur explains that to gain this sort of attention, you must build up your reputation, and respond to your customers’ complaints and concerns in a reasonable timeframe.

When you're starting out, you won't have the advantage of a big name, unless you're successful enough to merge with an already established company. To build up your reputation, practice good business. For instance, make sure you respond to your customers' orders promptly. If you can't do it yourself, set up an autoresponder or hire a person to deal with orders. Offer rebates if the customer is dissatisfied with your product or service. Most of all, keep up a friendly persona. Generally, as the adage goes, the customer is always right. This isn't always an easy rule to live by, but it's important that a beginning business try as much as it can to observe it.

The more you do good business and the more you promote yourself, the more you'll get a name going in internet markets. The speed of information today can help or harm you. If you deliver terrible service, a blogger can write about his or her experience and within hours, your name and reputation can be decimated throughout cyberspace.

It's easy to track this via Google Alerts, or for instant updates, check search on Twitter. SocialMention.com is another free tool, as is Mention.net. Trackur.com from expert marketer Andy Beal is your best, low-cost solution for this, and you get a free trial to start.

Problems inevitably occur, but be responsive and fix them so you build a solid foundation of integrity for your company.

You’re going to make mistakes while setting up a successful website, but by learning about some of the factors ahead of time, hopefully making these errors will be preventable. To learn how to set up a site that succeeds, we walk you through how to start a profitable online business during our free webinar training. Register for our next training today!

Sources: Nomiscom Web Design, Single Grain, Entrepreneur, Search Engine Journal