Google loves to brag about the amount of websites they have indexed. The part that no one talks about is how relevant 99% of these sites actually are. The timeless rule of "Free always wins" is taking a toll on the development of websites as conglomerates continue to wholesale "plug and play" technologies. There's too many websites that aren't successful.
Don't mistake me for a conservative who is too afraid to lose his job. I develop and support Drupal, a platform that strives to eliminate repetitive work and allows me to charge for what I actually want to do, create.
These 5 steps might seem broad, however they are essential in order to realize the full potential of an idea. I've seen websites stall right after months of development by lack of initiative on the crew/owner. Don't let that happen to your project.
Find the core
Ever heard of an elevator pitch? That's when you explain exactly what your company/project does in 30-60 seconds. It might seem easy at first to think "I can just explain it really fast". That's not going to work. You want the every word uttered to be important and concise. Before this helps anyone else understand your project, it will help you hone in on what the essence of the project is to begin with. If your idea is an already existing idea with a twist, embrace the twist and make that your selling point, otherwise your project is just rehash.
For more ideas watch Pitches at Techcrunch.com
Build a feature, release, repeat
This is called iterative development. A reason many projects get bogged down and abandoned in web development is usually feature overload which causes severe scope creep or sometimes the investor realizes it will take longer than he/she thought.
A way to curb this rate of failure is to develop the core features of your project and release them. Test them against a real audience, get invaluable feedback and then build on top of the existing code to improve it the right way.
A side-effect of this development process is the prevention of feature overload to new users. If your application has a very cluttered UI but your core message is straightforward, your bounce rate will be higher than if you executed your core message successfully. Your users will sign up to use simple and promised core features. Every feature after that will be something suggested by the users, it's win win.
Feedback is priceless
Feedback is golden, specially when it can help you decide what your next move is and not how bad your previous move (or several moves!) was. This is where you can turn the negative critic into a gold mine of ideas. If you gather feedback from users, use it to decide what feature to improve or remove. The key is to always work in "tangible" features, otherwise your application will be too hard to modify and it'll never be able to keep up (it will fail).
Promote
Everyone has a twitter account, it's fantastic, I suppose. The problem with twitter is the analogy of it being a stadium full of people and everyone is talking out loud (Don't forget the thousands of twitter robots that speak too!). A lot of companies can forget twitter as a means of promotion and use it instead as conversation tool for already existing users (like pizza hut, for example). I'm glad I got that off my chest.
If you found the core of your website. You are much closer to finding your keywords, which is what matters for SEO and PPC. Don't be afraid to start a PPC campaign if you are confident with your keywords. You can always hire an expert (like us!) to help you if it's important.
If you're launching an application, one of the sure fire ways to explode into fame is to negotiate your way into blogs like Techcrunch or Lifehacker. You have to figure out which market your website/application falls in, find the hubs and use them to your advantage.
Sell it well
Deliver what you promise and while your at it, throw the house out the window. If you can't give it all for free, give it real cheap. More often than not, the business model on the internet is wholesale, volume. If you have a blog/content website, you need to do your best to focus on quality content and unfortunately (for the lazy ones), lots of quality content.
If you are launching an application, give it away for some time, you need a buzz. Who's gonna talk about your app if no one is signing up? Your bounce rate is high and your ad words money is evaporating. Make it outrageous (at least while you show your worth) for users. Providing volume services is not extremely expensive, you can afford to give away memberships in exchange for some invaluable buzz.
Do you have any rules of your own to make a successful website? Tell us in the comments
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