Running a website is easy. Running a successful website? That’ll take some work. According to estimates, there are around 2 billion websites on the internet, which is another way of saying that you’ll have a lot of competition for Visitors. Of course, the vast majority of websites receive what amounts to zero visitors, so it’s not quite accurate to say that you’ll be competing with 2 billion sites. But it’ll be difficult to get ahead even if you’re up against only a fraction of that number.
There’s no magic bullet that’ll pull in visitors to your site. But there are things you can do that’ll greatly enhance your chances of success. In this blog, we’ll run through some of the key factors that can contribute to attracting visitors.
There are plenty of general websites out there. But those sites typically don’t receive any visitors, purely because they’re too general. A good website has a main area of expertise or a unique selling proposition. For example, it could be a website that focuses on a specific sports team, or it may deal with issues relating to parenting and family life. Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter what the site is for, so long as it’s instantly clear to people when they land on your homepage. Offering specialist content will also help with your Google ranking, which will also help to boost your visitor numbers.
Modern Design
Web users have high expectations regarding the look and feel of the websites they visit, and rightly so. The standard of websites is exceptionally high, and there’s no reason for someone to spend time on a website that doesn’t live up to expectations. If your site has a clunky or outdated design, then, in all likelihood, your visitors will leave the website and look elsewhere. In this day and age, getting a well-designed website couldn’t be easier. You can work with a web designer if you want, but you can also use a pre-made, customisable theme that’ll bring your site in line with modern standards.
Great User Experience
Website owners have a responsibility to their visitors. If you’re going to ask people to spend time on your site, then you need to offer a great user experience. After all, web users don’t owe you anything — they won’t spend time on your website just because you’re there. There are many ways to provide a great user experience. For example, you can make your website easy to navigate; your visitors should be able to get to where they want to go, with as little difficulty as possible.
It’s also important to avoid annoying your visitors. A site that contains too many popups, adverts, or dark patterns, to name just some of the frustrating aspects of the web, will be sure to push its visitors away.
Well-Functioning
The content and look of your website are important. But those things will be of no use if your website isn’t well-functioning. A site that is broken can’t deliver its goodness to its visitors! Take a look at the big websites, and you’ll notice that you rarely, if ever, come across any site malfunctions. While you may not be able to reach the same level of excellence as those websites, it is something that you should at least aspire to. It’s best to check your website from the user side from time to time to check that all the changes you’ve made behind the scenes are working as intended.
Analysing the Data
You might think that your website is doing well, but unless you dive into the data, you can’t know for sure — and you can’t know how you should be improving your website, either. In this day and age, there’s no reason not to take a look under the hood to see what’s working, what’s not and other key pieces of information that can shape the future of your site. Google Analytics has historically been a common tool for this purpose, but, with many people having problems with GA4, many alternatives have risen in prominence. Ultimately, once you have the right tool, you should find that you can get all the data and information you need to guide strategic decisions for your website.
User Engagement
Many website owners tend to think that their website is just a voice with which they send their messages out to the public. But those types of websites tend to fall flat, and it all has to do with taking the wrong approach. Rather than viewing your website as a means for sending your thoughts, opinions, and messages, it’s best to view it as a facilitator of conversation between you and your audience. Websites that make their visitors feel included generally do much better than ones that don’t. How you do this will depend on the type of website that you operate, but it could be something as similar as addressing the audience, asking for their feedback, and responding to comments.
Quality Content
A website could have the greatest design and functionality on the planet, but if the site only has low-quality content, then it’s unlikely to be successful. People want to engage with valuable content more than they want to look at pretty website design. The days of filling a website with as much content as possible and hoping to attract visitors are over. Today, it’s quality that rules, not quantity. It’s much better to publish one well-thought-out article rather than ten hastily-written articles.
Useful Information
It’s important to focus on providing fun and enjoyment to your visitors. However, it’s just as important to include useful information, such as your contact information. This is especially important if you’re running a business, but in truth, all websites would benefit — you never know when one of your visitors will encounter an issue with your site. And when they do, they’ll want to get in touch.
Plus, listing as many contact methods as possible just helps to create a professional look and feel, and that alone can give your website the edge over the vast majority of other sites.
Error-Free
There’s no such thing as a perfect website. Still, it’s best to strive for perfection! The consequences of having many mistakes and errors on your website can be costly, after all. A website that has multiple spelling and grammatical errors, lists incorrect information, or has broken pages will lose the confidence of its visitors. And once that happens, it can be difficult/impossible to get them back.
Marketing Your Site
Building the website is half the battle. The other half is marketing your website so that as many people as possible are able to find you. There are a million ways to get your website out there, with some more effective than others. At a minimum, you’ll want to invest in your site’s SEO credentials, so that your site scores highly on Google’s search results page. It might be possible to find success without currying up to Google, but we’re not sure how you’d do that!
There are more subtle ways to market your website, too. For example, by building a strong social media presence or writing guest posts for popular sites with a backlink to your website.
Mobile Responsive
Did you know that more people today browse the web on their smartphones than they do on their laptop or computer? It’s true — and that means that your site needs to work just as well on mobile devices as it does on a computer, perhaps even more so. There are plenty of plugins that’ll help you to get a mobile responsive website, which will ensure that your website automatically responds to your visitor’s device and adjusts accordingly. People really don’t like viewing a desktop screen on their devices!
Avoid Clutter
People don’t like cluttered rooms in the real world, and they don’t like cluttered rooms in the virtual world, either. A website that has too much going on provides a sensory overload for visitors that they don’t enjoy. Keep things simple.
Check the Speed and Function Across Various Devices/Browsers
Your website might work brilliantly when you check it on your device. But that doesn’t mean that it’s guaranteed to work just as well on all other devices. Indeed, in some cases, you might find that your website fails to live up to expectations in a hugely detrimental way, such as running overly slowly or failing to load correctly. As such, it’s recommended to check that your site works well across all device and browser types. You don’t necessarily need to do this all by yourself — friends and family members can help.
Conclusion
If you’re going to take the time and effort to put together a website, then you’ll want it to be successful, even if it’s only in a lowkey way. At the very least, you’ll want to avoid pushing your visitors away due to easily avoidable errors. Take the tips that we’ve outlined above onboard, and you’ll have created a framework that gives you the best possible chance of success.
