If You Build It, Will They Come?

Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 5:44 PM

You know, if you’re going to be doing business online, then you’re going to have to have at, one point or another, a website. The thing to remember is website will say a lot about you and the way that you’re presenting your business to the world.

So let me ask you something. Why is it some websites do so well and others fail so miserably. You know what I’m talking about, the difference between a site that draws you in and the site that makes you immediately click away.

What’s the difference? What do successful websites do right and the ones that fail do wrong?

With that in mind, you have to realize there are quite a number of common mistakes that will seal the fate on internet marketers and their dreams. Here are 6 of them, which hopefully, you’d try to avoid at all cost.

1) A Need for Speed

To me, there is nothing more irritating than a website that takes forever to load. I realize that most Internet users these days have high speed or broadband connections, but a great percentage of the rest of the world are still hooked up to the World Wide Web via slower 56K access. This is not something that should be taken for granted.

When you build your website, try to avoid very large graphic files, fancy movies or flash animation. You need a website that will deliver the information it promises at an instantaneous rate, and for this reason, you have to choose functionality over design. This is not to say, that all of these things are not to be used, but be aware of the potential problems.

2) Ease of Navigation

If your webpages are cluttered and not organized and your internal links not clearly defined, you’ll just end up frustrating your visitors and causing them to click away. You don’t want your visitors to get stuck on any one page. You need to make it easy for them to explore your website. Your pages must be clearly interlinked easily navigable that even a 7 year old will be able to understand.

Once again, it’s all about your visitors experience. It’s always best, to place your navigation links either at the top of the page right below the header, or at either side of the page in a separate column. This is where your visitors’ eyes will wander once they want to discover the other pages in your website.

3) Content Counts

It’s commonly said that content is king on the Internet. People log online to find information they need, and information is conveyed through your content. If your content is poorly written, who will have the patience to read the same? If your content is not unique, why will people choose your website over others? Indeed, there are two requisites for good quality content: excellent presentation and originality. Minus either of this, your entire website will be in jeopardy.

This is especially true for marketing website where you have to draw your visitors in and piqued their interest about what it is you’re promoting. Lose that and you lose potential customers as well.

4) Keywords Open the Doors

As important as good content is still successful website, so our having the right keywords. Keywords drive traffic to your website. Keywords are the terms that people search for when they’re looking for information. If you targeted the right keywords, quality visitors will come in droves. If you targeted the wrong keywords, visitors will be scarce. So make sure you discover the right keywords even before you start building your website.

It’s always best when putting together the content of your website, as do some research concerning the appropriate key words that you need to use for the meta-tag your website. One of the best places to do your research is located here:

Google Keyword Tool

5) Cookie Cutter Conundrum

And important aspect to consider where your website is concerned is that of originality – or the lack of it. With so many websites online, you have to stand out in the crowd. You have to shine when people visit your website. So here are some of the questions you need to ask yourself.

Why would people choose your website over thousands of others sharing the same layout and boasting of the same content? What makes your website special? If these questions cannot be answered positively, then your online business is doomed. Worse, search engines penalize duplicate content, and your website will have a lower position in the search engine results.

The best way to to avoid this is to stop trying to be like everyone else and be who you are. Figure out what makes you different or unique from everyone else and work with that. In other words, dare to be different.

6) What’s It All About

Another way to stand out in the crowd is to be focused on what your website is all about. It needs to target a specific topic and everything that’s there needs to be related to that topic. This is especially true concerning the content you provide, the related keywords you use and how it relates to information that your visitors are looking for.

If your visitors get confused on what your website is all about, then their one click away from being gone.

Ask yourself this. Why would visitors who are interested in dogs, want to see information about astronomy? It makes no sense, as there is no connection between the two subjects. I know a lot of people want to try to cram as much as they can on to a website, the better to stay focused and targeted on the information you’re providing.

Your best bet, is to have multiple websites with targeted information that are unique and stand out. This way, you stand a better chance of visitors wanting to spend time looking around your site and more importantly coming back often to see what new content has been added.

I think you get the general idea of some of the things you need to try and avoid. Your online business depends on how well your website fares. So take some time to think about how you can properly build your website to not only get people coming to your site, but coming off the.

Remember, the people may be visitors now, but hopefully they will become customers for the long-term.