Do you want a website that stands out from the crowd and brings in the traffic and revenue where others fail? Simply follow these easy 21 ways to website success, incorporate them into your website, and you'll never look back.
Make your website load quickly and if you use flash or something bandwidth hungry make sure your visitors have something to watch while it loads
Get someone impartial to view your website for a maximum of five seconds and then tell you what it's about and what they remember seeing. This can be an eye-opener and help you clear away clutter from your main page to show just the main features
Make sure (and sure means absolutely sure) that all links within your website work and that all links to outside sites are good and make a point of allocating time to check this each week
Never use free hosting, get your own domain name and some proper paid-for hosting
Offer something valuable completely free to download in exchange for an email address and offer the link to this in big letters on the main page
Have a time each week when you review and think about your website, what it has achieved and what you intend to do in the future and try to put in place at least one change
Add new content at least each day, even if it's only something small, putting a link on the main page to the new content and then show the update date at the page bottom
Each week check how interactive your website has been and try to think of new ways to make it more interactive by using forums or polls
Have a policy, a direction and a goal that you can write down and explain to people if you had to and also make sure you know how much money your site is making
Look at sites similar to yours and list five reasons why they are better and five reasons why they are worse
List in your head all the ways you promote your website online and try to think of three more
List in your head all the ways you promote your website offline and try to think of three more
Write (or get) - good content and always (that is always) spellcheck everything before you post and make sure there are no exceptions to this
Look at your stats and ask yourself this question: "If I split my site in two would the two sites make more revenue (or traffic) than the one I have already?"
Check emails from customers or readers regularly and try to answer them the same day
Take the time to optimise your site for search engines and make sure that each page is as good as you can get it - nothing helps build a site better or quicker than this!
Would a blog drive more traffic your way? If you haven't time to write one yourself, advertise for a blogger to do it for you
Publish a sitemap and use it yourself to work out where visitors go and make sure that the navigation is set up for them to easily move around and go where you want them to go
Make sure you get people to test your site and give you feedback on problems they encounter and also get them to check after major changes or from time to time
Make your site is accessible
Remember, your site is never finished! Make sure that you are always thinking about it and about ways to improve and grow
