30 Web Site Success Tips

While these tips were written for a business conference I spoke at, and therefore are mostly business orientated, there are many things that apply to personal web sites as well. If you run a personal web site, try to see how these tips can be applied to your situation. Why? Because even with a personal site, you're selling yourself and your site just a business site sells themselves and their products. It's all part of being as professional as possible so you may create the best site possible for yourself.

Don't make visitors wait for a slow loading site because of page bloat or poor hosting, because they won't wait long.
Don't use cutting-edge or beta technology, or technology that requires visitors to download a plugin. If you crash a person's browser or aggravate them with unwanted downloads, you've lost them.
Don't use frames unless you have a good reason and know what you're doing. Most framed sites are unnecessary and many people detest frames. Some search engines can't index them, and many of the ones that do index them do a very poor job of it. You are cutting off much your traffic from search engines if you use frames.
Don't use free or generic "clip art" graphics. Cheesy is great for us Green Bay Packer fans, but not good when it comes to the looks of your web site.
Don't spend too much time talking about yourself or your company. People are at your site to see what's in it for them - they care little about you until they find value in what you say or offer.
Don't make your web site so visually busy that visitors are overwhelmed. Use appropriate white space and clean design, create separate sections of content for large sites. Don't make your site one long page, try to keep each page at 3 - 5 screen lengths or less.
Don't offer your visitors offsite links in prime locations unless you're being compensated by ad revenue or return traffic. An exception might be when you receive a link on a secondary page of a high traffic site and you have a low traffic site. You may need to offer a better positioned link to compensate for the traffic disparity.
Always test your site with multiple web browsers. What works in one brand may not work in another.
Don't forget to proofread and spell check your entire site. Your professionalism as a business will be judged by your web site's appearance, including punctuation, spelling and grandma...er, grammar.
Don't use clashing, loud colors; backgrounds that make it hard to read your text; or animations that distract the visitor's eye and detract from your objective. Business sites should always use white as the main background color. A left border background can add a splash of color if needed, or a centered table over a full-page style background such as this web site uses (if your browser is maximized and your screen resolution is set high enough to see it) can add the ambience you want.
Studies have shown that black text on a white background is the most readable. This combination is recognized as the most professional choice.
Design your site to be optimally viewed at the most common screen resolutions, not just your screen resolution.
Maintain a consistent look and feel throughout your whole site. Changing the look and feel of your pages makes people wonder if they've left your site, as well as causing many to think your web presence as less professional than your competitors. If they think that, you'll lose sales.
Do provide a practical, usable, and consistent navigational system. If it's hard or confusing to get around your site, most people will be getting around another site soon, instead of yours. Some webmasters seem to intentionally give their web site a lot of little offbeat paths, as if they think it wise to create a sense of adventure and discovery. The truth is, people are mainly online to discover two things - information and products or services - and not for a treasure hunt. It's the goodies they want to discover, not a convoluted path to the goodies.
Offer valuable information, tools, and resources. The more quality content you can offer the better your site will be, the more likely people will return, and the more likely that someone will tell a friend about it. Word-of-mouth advertising is as important online as offline. People tend to tell others more readily about online resources than they do offline because it's fast and easy to do so via email and instant messaging programs.
Do provide fresh content and updates on a regular basis. No one will keep coming back to see the same old thing. Repeat visits is a key to sales.
Do something to capture a visitor's attention immediately. People have short attention spans, they'll often move on within 20 seconds if you haven't piqued their interest. A professional, high quality look helps, as does compelling text or offers.
Do everything you can to encourage visitors to opt-in to your mailing list or ezine/newsletter. This will be your most reliable market and they'll provide your most valuable feedback.
Do encourage feedback, interactivity, and a sense of community. It's human nature to need a sense of inclusion, even it's just being able to provide feedback.
Do provide your contact information where it's easy to find. This helps encourage trust. Adding your picture to your web site is another trust stimulating factor. Most people will trust someone they can see over someone they can't - they reason you're not a scam artist hiding behind a web site if you're willing to put your smiling mug online for them to see.
Define your goals and site's purpose before you start and remember the reasons you're creating a web site when you start designing - BUT, design your site for your visitors. Remember, as far as they're concerned, it's what's in it for them that matters most.
Do register your own domain name and use professional hosting. Sites hosted at free hosts are hard to get indexed in search engines because they come and go too fast, causing dead links; and your business will not being taken seriously by those who do find it - period, end of story.
Don't write in officious, dry, corporate language unless your site specifically caters to business executives or technical people. Most people prefer a friendly, casual style of writing. Ya dig?
If you're selling products online, you must be able to accept credit card orders. Very few folks will take the time to send a mail order. If you can't capture the impulse buy, you won't accomplish your sales goals no matter how minimal they are.
Answer email inquiries within 24-48 hours. Anything beyond that will make people wonder what kind of service and support you will provide if they buy from you. If you can't, use an autoresponder to reply with a generic thank you email with the promise that you'll respond soon.

Just putting a site online isn't enough. You do need to promote it, online and offline. If you think of a web site as just an aside to your real world business it will not provide the benefits it could. Your online presence can be a new and valuable dimension to your existing business, while at the same time being a business unto itself.

Online, it needs to be promoted through search engines and directories, strategic link exchanges, intelligent advertising, and other promotional opportunities that vary with the nature of each business.

Offline you should include your web site address anywhere you place your business name. This includes, but is not limited to:

On your after-hours Answering Machine
On your Business Checks
On Letterheads
On Business Cards
In your Yellow Page Ads
On Newspaper Display Ads, Flyers or Inserts
In your Classified Ads
On your Invoices
On your Sales Receipts
On your Product Bagging/Packaging Materials
In Direct Mailings
On your Company Brochures and other Literature
Include it with your Radio and Television Ads
On Billboards if you advertise that way
Any promotional material you produce - include your web site address. The wider the use of your Internet address the more impact it will have for you.

Think Integration here. Too many companies separate offline and online activities. They view their physical business as one entity, and their web site as a separate entity. The fact is, an integrated marketing approach is the most effective strategy.

Strategically placed signs in your physical store advertising your web site address will not only generate more traffic to your web site, it shows the public you are a modern company interested in serving their needs in every way possible. They may look for products or information on your web site after store hours if they're aware of your site.

Even better, print Internet cards for people to take and place them by the cash register or wherever you place signs promoting your web site. If they pick up your Internet card, they will surely visit your web site. Internet cards are simply business cards dedicated to your web site. They include your business name, web site address and perhaps a brief description.

Utilize free publicity with press releases. Newspapers often edit out desired information. Include your web site address in your press release stressing that the full story can be found on your web site.
Newsworthy items for press releases include:
New launches (including a new web site)
New products or services
Business expansion
Employee hirings or promotions
Competitions
Industry news
Offer online only specials. It causes people to frequent your web site looking for deals, and you'll have more chances to sell them other products as well. It also causes branding, that is, even if they don't need your main products or services now, they will think of you first when they do have a need for what you offer.
Think FREE! On the Internet, content is king. You can create tremendous loyalty by offering valuable free content. This doesn't have to be physical goods that cost you for each item you give away. The best free thing to give away is information.
This can be in the form of articles, of course, but also giving away eBooks can be a boon to your business, especially if you encourage your visitors to give it away too. People will find your site from your eBook that would have otherwise never heard of you. Any free eBook has to be of sufficient quality that you could choose to sell it, or it's not a valuable free item that will excite people about your business.
On a side note, if you have in-depth knowledge on a topic, you can also create and sell eBooks. Not counting the content, which can be researched, it's much easier than you might think. If you can create web pages, you can create ebooks. They are the ultimate product because each sale is almost all pure profit. With the release of eBook Farming, I sold over 50 copies in 2 days. It sold for $39.95 so in two days I made over $2,000. Now, others have picked up on the topic so I've lowered the price to remain competitive. It sells for $27.00 now, and I continue to sell dozens of copies each month so it remains a nice income stream of hundreds of dollars per month - and that's just one ebook. I have others. :)
By the way, eBook Farming teaches you exactly how to research, write, compile, and sell your own eBooks. Everything you need to know to start your own business or add to your product line is included. Do you know why I keep writing new ebooks? IT PAYS WELL! And since the work is done, everytime I sell another copy my hourly pay keeps going up.
Did you get that? How would you like a job where you don't have to keep working, but you keep getting paid for it so you keep making more and more per hour for the work you did long ago! I love ebooks!
Always strive for quality. Your site will be compared to your competitor's sites, and decisions to purchase will be made in part, on how well your site stacks up against theirs.
And the final, most obvious, yet most important tip: always be honest, ethical, and fair. I see far too many sites that don't seem to understand that, and it's a critical factor in your online success. Word travels around the online world at lightning speed. If you are not an upstanding Netizen (internet citizen, folks will learn of it sooner rather than later and your work will be in vain.

Closing Comments

There are more tips I could have written, and there are many things that are more situationally intuitive rather than instructional in nature. Creating a simple web site isn't that difficult, but creating a successful web site another matter.

Those that succeed are those that stick with it. It takes time to build an online business to the point where the results excite you. Intelligence and common sense, a willingness to learn what works and what doesn't, patience, integrity, and the desire to make it work are the most important factors.

We've all heard of many online businesses that have failed and lost millions of dollars. The doom and gloom stories scared many people out of the idea of building a web business. But it was an unsustainable business model and a lack of understanding of how people react and respond online that caused the majority of these business failures, rather than a poor product or service.

What you don't hear much about is the many success stories. I earn my full-time living from the internet, and have since 1999*, so it's very possible indeed to create a successful online business because I'm just an average guy. Joe Average they call me.

Whether you do it yourself or hire a professional, always model yourself after the success of others who have blazed the way. To try to invent your own successful modus operandi means all but the most ingenious will be forever swimming against the tide.

*I started my first site as a hobby in 1997. Later that year I turned it into a part time business. By 1999 I took the business full time and have been self-employed since.

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