A big thank to the Internet, companies of big, medium and small sizes can globalize themselves to anywhere and anyone at anytime. With such mass exposure, websites that represent companies can make its appearance through millions of people who uses the internet. A website can be visited from a keyword in a search engine, a link from other website or direct access for people who already knew the site. You would see many potential visitors coming in and going out of a site and you wonder why they didn’t stay or buy anything from a site. The answer is likely because a site lacks of components of a successful website. I’m not talking about those award-winning sites that would amaze you with their fancy design like Leo Burnett or Saatchi (yet), at least not without first emphasizing on other more important components of a successful website. A successful website is a website that can provide an easy way for visitors to find your site through a relevant keyword, then intrigue them with good packaging and design, then attract them with what you have to offer, and lead them through a smooth journey to becoming a customer.  The ultimate objective of a successful website is not only to get applause for a good design and layout, but for the content, accessibility and convenience to appeal to visitors about your business. It’s about how effective a website can convert visitors into customer.

A successful website starts with a realistic goal. It should be a goal that would define and be the starting guide of how it will receive visitors. You need to have a specific goal to achieve what you want from creating a website. Once you know your goal, you will then need to develop and plan strategies to reach that goal. With these in mind focus on the 7 factors that determines a successful website: domain; content; programming; graphic design and architecture; maintenance strategy; seo and marketing; and backlinks. As each of these requires intense specialization to master effectively, this article will only cover what is essential.

Domain

The first thing that you’ll need to do is to think of a suitable name for your site that matches your business. A domain name that is search engine friendly and easy to remember would be delightful. You may also want to go on with your existing company name. After you’ve decided on the domain name, secure it for at least 5 years which doesn’t even cost more than USD$100 from Webserver.com.my, if you’re really serious about your site. Once you’ve secured your domain name, you can rest assured that no one is going to steal your site’s name after completing your site. You don’t want to have everything done just to realize that your name has been taken do you.

Content

Content is like the lion in the jungle. It roars on the internet and to your competitors, distinguishing your territory and your uniqueness. Content is the greatest asset of a website. The term unique content usually refers to written words, though it may also be graphics sometimes. Search engines are especially proud to index and rank websites with original and unique content on search results.  Although the dynamic of internet market is unpredictable and the algorithms of search ranking remain uncertain. But it is clear that original and unique content is a major contributor to better rankings. Aside from better SEO (more on that later), your valuable content would also be attracting other sites to feed from your site, generating more traffic and backlinks. While you can come out with any original content, you must also ensure the credibility of it as you don’t want to mislead the visitors to avoid getting boycott or ban. Writing content for a site may not be difficult but customizing your content to match the visitors and keywords for search engines may require more work on research. Always provide transparent and valuable information and update the content regularly as crawlers from search engines are very active in stalking your contents.

(Coming soon on programming and graphic design)