We all want our websites to perform well, whether it’s for creating brand awareness, generating leads, and supporting any marketing objective we might have for our brand.
As a digital marketing and communication consultant, I have developed digital strategies for clients with different needs across various industries. Still, one thing is that everyone wants a successful website to be a destination for their marketing and sales efforts.
I have never come across a single client who doesn’t want to increase traffic to their website. No matter the primary business objectives – if you are also like them, I don’t blame you because a successful website opens doors to many opportunities for success in whatever industry you operate in.
In this article, I share 5 ways to make your website successful; I deem these ways to be critical based on the experience I’ve had designing and developing websites under my boutique design studio, Phasha360.
There’s a lot of opinions around the internet regarding the factors that make a website successful. Hopefully, to add to the information overload, clarity, and confusion, here are my ways to help your website become a success.
1. Define your website goals clearly
A saying goes, “a problem well defined is half solved” this saying might also apply to the topic at hand. Because the clearer your goals are defined, the easier it will be to achieve them and develop a marketing strategy to tackle them quickly.
While you define your business goals, it’s also quite vital to consider the user’s goals – because, after all, the website users will be the ones interacting with the website. Detailing the goals users should accomplish when they visit your website is the number 1 recipe to a successful website.
But you must just ensure that your business goals and the goals you have defined for your users are aligned. You wouldn’t want a situation where users land on your website and do not know what action to take.
2. Have a clear budget
Having a clear, set budget for your website is like telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went. If your budget is clearly defined, it will be easy to choose the most ideal CMS, technology, and type of website you need and what limitations you need to be aware of ahead of time.
If your budget is low and only allows for off-the-shelf CMS like Wix, Squarespace, weeble, webflowetc. Just ensure that you are aware of the limitation to not affect the user and business goals.
Custom development is ideal, but ensure that you don’t break the bank since custom-built websites require a support and maintenance retainer from the agency or freelancer who builds them.
Don’t over or undersell. Know what your upfront investment is and what the incremental one is and if it aligns with your goals, then make the right decisions to support your business.
3. Prioritise usability and user experience
In simple terms, usability is defined as the degree to which something is able or fit to be used. Your website needs to achieve this one main important objective. Because if it’s not useable, how do you expect it to be successful?
While usability focuses on ease of use. You also need to ensure that you get the user experience right. Which is about the overall feeling that a user gets before, during, and after visiting your website.
Your user experience objective needs to align with the website goals that you have already set. The user experience will further inform the user interface – the look and feel of the website.
4. Don’t forget about SEO
Without SEO, people looking for your website and the services or products you offer won’t find your website. A well-optimised website will guarantee success in many ways – just ensure that you don’t optimise your website for search engines but rather for people and their search intent.
5. Zero downtime should be an order of the day
Uptime is often all we think about when it comes to making sure that a website works. When choosing a hosting company and a website technology, you must ensure that their servers don’t have any downtime or have a backup.
With the website technology, ensure that the developers who build your website use lightweight code that doesn’t wear down the website. If you are using a CMS, make sure that you are well aware of the extent to which you can customise it.
Conclusion
The list of critical factors to keep in mind if you want your website to succeed is endless. Because the digital space is forever evolving, we should keep our ear on the ground for any new developments, but I will add other factors to extend this list even further each quarter.
