What Does a Successful Website Mean?
Since it became available, we often have a go with a bit of AI before we write a blog post. We don’t, as a rule, use the content it creates, but often there’s a structure in there, sometimes even some ideas. We all know that Generative AI sometimes gets some things wrong. But when we asked: “What Does a Successful Website Mean?” … it was much wronger than most times.
Generative AI Gets Things Wrong?
Indeed, and often plausibly. But in this case, Chat GPT really never seemed to get the point. Of course, it mentioned the basics:
- Clear Purpose and Goals
- User-Centric Design
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
- High-Quality Content
- Performance and Speed
- Mobile Responsiveness
- Strong Security Measures
- Analytics and Adaptability
- Engagement and Community Building
- Monetisation and Return on Investment (ROI)
We do all of these. Little Fire Digital can help with all of them. But that’s the point; everything above is the basics – if you cannot deliver any of them, an agency like ours should refer you to someone who can. Not one of these means that your website will be successful.
Indeed, over-emphasis on any one of the above will probably result in a site which fails elsewhere. Spending a fortune to get the wrong keywords to the top of Google, making a site which earns a fortune in revenues and then leaks all your clients’ passwords … the paths to failure are legion.
So What Does a Successful Website Mean?
In short, a successful website serves the needs of the owner more successfully than any other method. Nothing more.
If printing a thousand hand-bills and shoving them through doors makes a window cleaner more money than a tidy website, then the hand-bills are more successful than the website … that guy should print more hand-bills.
It’s Not Just About Money
Everyone likes money. Money is often the brief and, as an agency, it’s a nice, easy one. When money is the key metric, it’s very easy to measure.
But we’ve seen e-commerce sites suck up so much of the market that customers stopped coming to the physical shop … and the owner loves his shop more than his website.
There are worse problems to have, but it’s a problem nonetheless.
It’s Not Just About Visitors
Everyone likes traffic. More traffic means more likelihood of a user hitting a vital conversion. Traffic is often the brief and, as an agency, it’s a nice, straightforward one. When traffic is the key metric, it’s very easy to measure.
You can spend a ton of money driving users to your website. But if those users are looking for the durability of a submarine’s hull rather than details of the nightlife in Kingston upon Hull (true story), they will leave the moment they arrive. These ‘bounces’ are detrimental to your search engine ranking and it means all that money has been wasted.
Without visitors, your site is meaningless. Without the right visitors, your site is almost meaningless.
It’s Not Just About Mobile Friendliness
The web has become a very democratic place. A respectable-looking, mobile-friendly design is within the reach of even relatively novice web designers.
But looking good is not the same as being good. There are long-established, empirically observable principles behind design. If you don’t know them, you’ll most likely confuse and annoy your users.
So What Makes a Successful Website?
Normally, the metrics which indicate a website is performing (contact form completions, mailing list, sales, etc.) align closely with what the company needs from it.
But not always. We’ve met charities who do not want to be contacted by their service users. We’ve created websites solely to demonstrate legal certification. One website exists solely to serve a single client.
Before you start, before the first fingers hit the keyboard, the first webspace is provisioned, you need to work out how a website would benefit your business. Only then can you judge whether or not it is a success.
Working out what you need your website to be is the cheapest bit – and the bit, if not done correctly, that can cause all your efforts to fail.
Little Fire Digital know the basics, we know a lot of the complicated, but first and foremost, we’re interested in what makes a website successful. You should contact us.