What Do I Need For A Successful Website?

The Minimum You Need to Succeed

We have been doing this successfully for a long time. Our experience has shown us that there are seven elements that are needed to really make a web business work. We call these the Seven Pillars. They will support your whole web business strategy. We are not saying you can’t succeed without them – but you will do better, quicker, if you follow these guidelines.

• The right domain name : pretty obvious, but if your domain name contains words that describe your core business search engines will rank you higher for those keywords. An easy and effective way of upping your profile.
• Web design : you are competing with, potentially, millions of other sites so you need to stand out. And good web design will not only achieve this but it will make SEO easier and more effective and get you higher in the rankings on search engines. Good user-friendly design also puts your visitors at ease and makes them feel confident using your site’s features. Google likes well-designed, structured sites too!
• Custom development features : another element that makes you stand out, adds user-friendly functionality and generally makes your site better and simpler for the customer. The aim here is to simplify, and streamline in order to allow your customers to quickly find and get what they want.
• Right mix of organic and paid marketing : websites don’t market themselves and there is a lot of competition out there. You need to set your business up to take advantage of every avenue of organic eMarketing you can, and the new avenues that are constantly popping up. You should also be trying different paid advertising and marketing channels to develop your prospects.
• Excellent analytics : you need to know what is working well – and what isn’t so you can concentrate your spend and efforts where it is most effective. This doesn’t just mean attracting visitors but attracting those who convert into paying customers. Good analytics will tell you everything about where your users come from and what they do.
• Web hosting : effective hosting will make sure your site works quickly, efficiently and is (almost) never down. The easier your site is to use and the more reliable in terms of availability, navigation and movement, the more you will engage and retain users. And the better chance you have to convert them to customers. Downtime or continually handling large amounts of spam can be costly for your business. Our servers have99.999% uptime since 2008.
• Customer support : to grow, adapt and be successful, a web business needs great customer support. Having the website designed and built properly in the first place makes adaption easier but you still need to talk with someone who understands both your needs and the needs of the marketplace – and not just someone who knows how a piece of software works. We understand that it is the interaction of the marketing and business knowledge and the technical and design aspects that really make a web business work.

By Dr. Ataollah Etemadi