Did you know that there are more than a billion websites? However, that doesn’t mean that web users are visiting a wide, wide range of sites. They’re not. The vast majority of websites receive no visitors at all. They’re just sitting there, on the web, taking up digital space.
If you want to have a website, then you can do so within fifteen minutes. But if you want to have a website that attracts visitors, then that’ll take work. This will be especially important if your website is critical to your business success, but even if you’re just doing it for fun, you still want the satisfaction of knowing that people enjoy your site.
It’s easier said than done, but it’s not too difficult. It’s just a matter of ensuring that the website has all the ingredients required for a successful site. If you can ensure it has all those things and have a pinch of luck, then you might just find that you get plenty of visitors.
First impressions count for a lot in the digital world. Actually, they count for a lot in all worlds. When there are so many websites to choose from, people are pretty quick to make judgements. If your website looks like it’s from 2005, then you can’t blame them for looking elsewhere. The only exception is when a website has been intentionally designed to look retro, but even then, it must have a good design.
In all likelihood, you’ll want your site to look like it belongs in this era. While you can design your website yourself, it’s nearly always best to hire someone to do the job for you. They’ll have plenty of little tricks they can incorporate that helps to appeal to your audience.
If you want a professional then Cude Design is a good one that we recommend.
A Memorable Domain Name
The goal isn’t to get one-time visitors to your website. Success comes from having repeat visitors to your website. You can make it much easier for people to return to your website by having a memorable domain name. Or, at the very least, you should avoid making the domain name overly complicated. You might think you’re being smart by picking a name that has lots of fancy wordplay, but if it’s too clever, then people will struggle to remember it – and, as a result, will likely never come back to your website.
So pick something simple. Your success depends on it.
Navigation
Your home page will be a good introduction to your website, but it’s unlikely to contain all the good stuff that you want people to see. That’ll be on other pages. The question is, how easy is it to get from one page to another? There are some forward-thinking websites that are a little too futuristic. It’s impossible to get anywhere!
First and foremost, think about the user experience. You should have a sense of the technological capabilities of your target audience. If they landed on your website, would they find it easier to get from A to B? Is it intuitive? If the answer is no, then it’s time to rethink your website. This is especially important if you’re selling products on your site. After all, people can’t buy your items if they can’t reach the product pages.
High-Quality Photos
You don’t notice high-quality photos. Still, they’re essential. Why? Because you very much do notice low-quality photos. They just stand out. In this day and age, there’s no reason to have low-quality photos on your site. After all, there are plenty of free stock image websites where you can download quality images without paying a penny. If you’re a business, then it’s usually best to use paid images, however. Quality stock images for free do exist, but that means that you tend to see the same photos over and over again, and that can damage brand perception.
Flawless Writing
You can present the visual aspect of your website as well as you like, but if the writing isn’t up to standard, then you’ll be giving your visitors an opportunity to doubt your credibility — and that can quickly cause them to visit another website. You don’t need to have Shakespeare-worthy writing on your website, but it should at least be clean, informative, and free of mistakes. As with website design, it’s usually best to hire someone to do the job for you. However, if you’re on a budget and need to write your web copy yourself, then at least put it through an in-depth spellcheck such as Grammarly, which will pick up any errors.
Valuable Content
People aren’t going to spend time on your website just for the sake of it. They’ll want to get something valuable from the experience. In fact, that should broadly be your overriding mission: to give them a good experience. You might be selling products, but you can give them much more than just the opportunity to buy whatever it is that you’re selling. For instance, you could offer informative how-to guides, tips, and tricks that relate to your products and your broader industry. This can sound challenging, but it’s not really. You probably already have in-depth expertise about your products. The trick now is to put it into writing. With a few blogging tips, you’ll be able to put together well-crafted content that your audience will love. You may also consider putting together podcasts, white papers, and instructional videos.
About You
If you’re a small business owner, then you’ll have one clear advantage over the big-name competitors. You’ll be able to tell your story, which is something that large corporations can’t do (not in any interesting way, anyway). A comprehensive ’about you’ page can go a long way towards winning the trust of your audience, who like to know the people behind the website. This is your chance to introduce yourself, tell the world who you are, how the website came to
be, and things like that.
Contact Information
Your website shouldn’t be a speakerphone. It should be a telephone, one that allows your visitors to have their say. You might think that your visitors will have no reason to speak to you, but you’d be surprised – you never know what might land in your inbox. But that’ll only happen if you have all of your contact information on your website. If there’s none there, then no one will be able to contact you.
This can be slightly damaging at best, since it might mean you miss opportunities, to outright problematic at worst. If you’re selling products on your site, then you need to make it possible for your visitors to contact you. Indeed, if a person sees that there’s no way to contact the webmaster, then it’s unlikely that they’ll make a purchase. After all, why take the chance? People want to know that they can speak to someone if someone goes wrong.
So make sure that it’s possible. You can include your email address, phone number, and social media channels, and perhaps include a live chat feature.
Logical Steps
If you’re running a business via your website, then you’ll want to check that the payment process is as straightforward as possible. It’s amazing how many brands create overly complicated payment systems – all you’re really doing is making it more likely that your visitor will go elsewhere.
So what does a logical payment flow look like? First of all, it requires minimal steps. People don’t want to click through a million pages before they can place their order. Three is more than enough. You should also make it possible for visitors to pay via their preferred method. It’s easy enough to add multiple payment options to your site, such as credit card, PayPal, Apple Pay, etc. If you notice that you tend to have a high cart abandonment rate, then it’s probably got something to do with your payment steps.
Avoid Annoying Your Visitors
It takes a lot of effort to get people to a website. The last thing you want to do is turn them away for the most ridiculous of reasons. How many times have you been on a website that does something that annoys you and then stayed on the site? Probably never. There’s always another website out there.
So what are some of the annoying things that some websites think it’s ok to do? Having too many pop-up advertisements is one of them. Having a single pop-up advertising your newsletter is fine. Showing multiple pop-ups every ten seconds is not OK. Autoplay videos also annoy people, especially the ones that play sound. Large websites use this feature but don’t copy them – they do it because they know people will tolerate them. They’ll be less forgiving if they’re on your website.
Finally, avoid using dark patterns, which are design elements that push, in not very honest ways, users to do something that benefits the website. You’ll find that some people fall for these dark patterns, but you’ll lose more people than you gain.
Ongoing updates
As we said earlier, the goal shouldn’t be to get a bunch of one-time visitors to your website. You’ll want repeat visitors. That’s how you build successful websites. But of course, people won’t come back to your website if they have no faith that there’ll be anything new there for them to enjoy. They might have loved your website, but if they’ve seen all they need to see, then why would they return? They wouldn’t.
To make sure you have people coming back again and again, be sure to regularly update your website. This could be in the form of a new blog, restructuring the homepage content, or making new content available. This requires work, of course, but it’s essential. People like to see that a site is being actively managed.
Personalisation
People have high standards these days. They don’t always want to have generic content pushed their way. They want to feel like a site has been put together with them specifically in mind. Of course, that’s not entirely possible, but there are ways you can nudge their experience in that direction. It’s easy enough to incorporate elements of personalisation into your site once you’ve got some basic information. Could you include ‘products recommended for you’ or just include their name wherever possible? If you use WordPress as your host, then there are several plugins you can use to achieve this.
Safety and Security
There’s no avoiding digital safety and security these days. It’s a top concern for web users, and with good reason – cases of people being scammed are on the rise. You have a duty of care to ensure that people are safe from fraudsters when they’re on your website. In any case, if people don’t feel that you’re offering a good level of protection, then they’ll only leave your website anyway. Make sure you’re always keeping your website systems up to date, you have safety certificates, and perhaps consider hiring an IT team to offer another level of protection.
SEO Investment
Google is King and has been for a long time. Even with the rise of ChatGPT, it seems logical that Google will still be the main player in the game for many years to come. This is all another way of saying that if your website doesn’t do well on Google, then it’s unlikely that you’ll be successful. After all, for most people, Google is the gateway to the internet.
You can ensure that Google can find your website by investing in your website’s SEO, which basically means including everything that Google bots look for when they scan the web. Having an SEO-friendly website doesn’t guarantee success, but having a site that is not SEO-friendly virtually guarantees failure.
Time
Finally, remember that it takes a lot of time to build a loyal audience. Don’t be disheartened if your site is slow to take off. It’ll get there eventually, provided you follow all the tips that we’ve outlined above. It’s just a matter of slowly putting one foot in front of another.
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Clare
Hi, I'm Clare (Emmy's Mummy). A former Nanny and Mother of 2 - Emmy (born February 2010) and Harry (born October 2012). We are Essex based and share our adventures and misadventures of a busy crazy life.
