Forum Moderators: buckworks
Say tomorrow you were going to launch Widget's Software. What steps need to be made in order for a successful launch in today's internet envirnment. What drives traffic in 2002? How does a visitor get converted to a buyer? What campaigns keep a site in the for front? Etc. Etc. Etc. You all get the idea. Any posts are greatly appreciated. (wish I had this board by in school). ;)
1. Content: Have plenty of content for both the users and spiders. It should be content that keeps both coming back.
2. Simple design: Keep the design of the site as simple as possible. Don't confuse your users with a site full of junk. Google is a prime example of how effective simplicity can be.
3. Gimmicks won't last: Don't fall for the latest gimmick that promises to get you a top listing. A quality site with lots of content will beat out the flash in the pan sites in the long run.
There are just a couple things I could think of. I know that many people (including me) have made sites that go against these principles that make a ton of money but I don't think you can go wrong with them. It will be interesting for you to look at this updated paper in 3 years and see how wrong this one is also:)
2.Quickly satisfy the needs of the user.
3. Have an easy order process.
4. Differentiate from your competitors and heavily advertise that differentiation.
As a general rule of thumb.
1) I make sure that I have researched and exhausted all possible keywords + misspellings. What are the keywords that are really being used by the users. For example: 50 more people a month, on average, look for Stage Makeup over Theatrical Makeup. Puppets gets abot 1500 a month while Ventriloquist Dolls only gets 16. Same things, just a different way for saying it. Misspellings, Prime example of a misspelling is on a site I am working on now that is still in beta testing. Thanks to lots of research, I found that nearly as many people spell Valentine as Valantine. The page in particular sells Valentines Day costumes. The competitors totally missed out. The site shows up as number one on google for the misspelling with no competitors in site.
2) Make sure nothing in the site has more than 3 clicks dregree of separation. If it is an e-commerce site. Most surfers have an attention span of 30 seconds or less. If they can't find what they want in app' 30 seconds, kiss them good by.
3) Double check your site for possible SE spamming. It is easy to do on accident these days. And, it can lead to a big headache.
4) As mentioned above, keep the pages simple. Take a look at Google as mentioned before. Then go look at Yahoo. Yahoo is a smorgishborg of distracting junk. Google looks like a well done Bauh Haus design, simple, to the point, with form following function.
5) Flash (macromedia) is great for the wow effect. But, remember SEs see it as just another image. They can not index the contents of a flash object.
6) The designer is always to close to the forrest to see the trees. Have several other people, that have never seen the site before navigate it looking for specific objects. See what they say about it.
And that is my two cents
