Site-Reference latest featured article titled “Five Reasons Why Websites Fail” by Daniel Moxon is reprinted here. [Article]


Site-Reference newsletter article by Daniel Moxon is reprinted here.

Five Reasons Why Websites Fail

by Daniel Moxon

Webmasters will many times design a website without proper organization and structure — more often than not failing to recognize key components required in building a successful website. Proper coding and visual design aside, failure to recognize these key components can result in wasted effort — something no website owner wishes to see.

This article could have been written in one of two way — either discussing the key components for a website to succeed, or, in the way in which I have chosen, discussing why websites fail without these key components. So presented are five reasons why websites fail:

Lack of Market

Webmasters must first know their market; how popular is the demand for your service or your content? How many websites are competing against what your website has to offer? These two questions are crucial in terms of how well your website will be received. A website that is based on a market that isn’t even present can be risky, though if you have demand for it, a site can hit high success. Webmasters often times fail by creating a website based on a market that is already well-involved, and as such, can easily fall short of expectations by viewers because they aren’t up to par with their competitors.

No Selling Point

Webmasters can create a website, but without properly thinking of what is going to drive their site to success, they go ahead and build it without proper planning. The selling point I refer to is simply this:

What can my website provide that other websites cannot?

To lure in users or clients, you must provide a selling point to them that can beat out your competitors. If you provide a service, you will need something that is unique and original that other competitors don’t have to offer. If you provide content, you must provide content that is of better quality or provides a better concentration of content that your competitors cannot compete with. Without providing a selling point, viewers will not find any reason to stay at your website as it is just another site on the world wide web.

No Focal Point

Websites need to provide a strong focal point. I’ve seen many websites, and even designed a few websites of my own, without a strong focal point. The focal point is what drives your website. Websites need to provide their viewers with a strong message of what their website aims to achieve. For instance, if you have a commercial website selling products, do exactly that. Providing a mix of free content isn’t going to help your site sell products — it’s targeting an entirely new user-base. Without a strong focal point or a defining message to your viewers, a website may receive viewers from different markets than what was originally intended, causing confusion within the website.

Sticking to one market will increase a websites chance for success exponentially as opposed to targeting multiple markets.

Over complication

Webmasters often times over complicate their website by providing too many links and too much text for their viewers to look at. The best websites on the net are those that take something that may be complicated, but present it in such a way that appears simple to its viewers. Providing too much text on a website’s front page, complex layout designs, and too many links are prime examples of over complication. People like things cut and to the point. They don’t want to have to decipher messages behind paragraphs and paragraphs of text.

Take for example, using an iPod. Would you rather have to read five pages of text before learning how to play music on an iPod? Or would you rather have ten one-sentence steps on how to load music onto it and play it? The latter would be the most obvious choice. So why not apply that to your website?

Lack of Communication, Human Interaction

Alright, so you’ve coded your website and put it on the internet. You’re all done right? Wrong. Successful websites need to constantly be aware of their clients and viewers. How would you like it if you visited a website and had some issues with certain parts of their website? Wouldn’t you like to give some feedback? Providing your clients and viewers with an easy way for them to give you feedback is showing that you actually care about what they have to say.

However, that is just the first step. Responding to feedback is necessary as well. There are many solutions to providing this kind of easy-communication, quick-response situation. One solution would simply be to have a forums. Another solution would be to provide an email form on your site for clients/users to give feedback, remembering to check your email and attempting to respond to each question personally.

Remember, people like to know that there is indeed a man behind the website, not a greedy corperation or some machine doing all the work.

Conclusion

So there you have it, five reasons why websites fail and some explanation as to why and what to do about it. I hope you’ve enjoyed the article — I know I’ve enjoyed writing it.

About This Author

Daniel Moxon is an entrepreneur and the webmaster and founder of both Programming-Designs.com
and Pixel-Grid.com, a programming/web design site and pixel advertising site, respectively.

These and many more Internet Marketing article, news and resources can be found at www.site-reference.com

Related IMNewswatch Post

Read Site-Reference Latest Newsletter

*IMNewswatch would like to thank Site-Reference for granting permission to reprint the latest articles.

 

 

 

 

Sharing is caring