In the past couple of months, through no effort on my own, several people have asked me about building their part-time or small websites into larger efforts. Maybe our conversations might be helpful to a broader audience - so here we go.....
You want your site to grow? I think there are three fundamental areas where you have to stay focused - within each of them, there are many details - but the basic, distilled idea is a list of three.
First, "SPEED". Your site has to be fast - responsive - no waiting. Page load times on your site are the single most important contributor to your success. By itself, its nothing - but without it, you'll likely fail. I like great designs as much as the next person but let's face it - some of the most widely-used sites online are Google, Craigslist, eBay and Amazon. I imagine that, as senior design projects at the Miami School of Art, they fail. But, as sites that prove useful for visitors - they succeed. Of course, each has a fundamental value proposition they are delivering to people - best search, best shopping, best classifieds - but part of the delivery of the proposition ONLINE has to include speed. You load the page on your browser, you want to see it immediately. Anything different and visitors move on. So, as you consider your site re-design or launch - ignore this advice at your peril. A site may have the best content/commentary/proposition/product - but if it takes too long to see it - who really cares?
Second, "Driving Traffic" or "How do I get people to my site?" In my opinion, there are four progressive steps you need to consider. They are, in order, Social Marketing/Viral Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing and Other Online Advertising. If you have any offline business (event, store, magazine, etc.) then a fifth is Leverage Offline Channels.
Third, "Retain Traffic" or "Its cheaper to keep an existing customer than acquire a new one." On this subject, I have 2 questions to ask you that you should know the answers - "What are people searching for on your site once they get there?" and "What are people searching for that lead them to your site?"
Just because I have time on my hands, I'm going to provide more details to each of these ideas over the next couple of days/weeks.
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