Why Many Websites Do Not Survive?

“The one who owns the information owns the world.” Nathan Rothschild.

There are over 1.5 billion websites on the world wide web today but only less than 200 million are active. Which implies 75% of websites are not active today, but have parked domains.

Creating a selling website or online store is not “one step”, as claimed by manuals. It is a process that takes time and effort. To create a good website, you should think through each step, conduct a market analysis, and study the specifics of online trading. Ignorance of market mechanism and negligence to understand the specifics of online business promotion can lead to failure.

It’s understandable that most of us do not have time to study these strategies in depth. Therefore it is important to familiarize yourself with some basic knowledge about it. It is also suggested to entrust your website to a professional team where designers and developers work together. Let’s understand this point in detail.

Why does a website fail?

Here are some reasons listed:

TECHNICAL ASPECTS

• Domain name might not be properly configured or email linked to website stopped working.
• Malfunctioning of code while updating or upgrading to the hosting server operating system or computer browser or web framework.
• Third party codes used in the website, like plug-ins, addons, extensions,etc might not be up-to-date with the current environment.
• Duplicate content present on web can cause confusion to search engines to rank which version. This can result in traffic losses.  
• Hacked websites/Malware: Websites can be hacked ,which is very difficult to detect at first place and user info can be sent to unauthorized third party.This can result in trust issues of the customers. Therefore it is important to use strong admin passwords. Use only reputable third party plugins and take reviews from your clients frequently to make sure everything is working as expected.
• Lack of proper design and content can lead to user disinterest in the website. Too much or too less content can make it difficult to understand the product. Bad design will not attract user’s attention.Poor navigation lead to poor clarity of functionality.

OTHER ASPECTS

• Rapidity

People want everything in short period of time. They would like to make website in a day and expect the maximum benefit. Bringing the final product directly out will not be effective and may lead to significant loss. Building an online business is like preparing a dish. Following a proper recipe and patient cooking to let every ingredient give out its flavor. Creating an early version and performing trial run on every version is important. This helps in improving the website according to the feedback obtained. Otherwise it will be just like a boiled up dish of ingredients with no sense of flavor and will be a complete time and money waste.

• Not understanding the importance of collaboration

The result of not understanding the close interrelationship between web design and development can be drastic. This occur mostly when people order analytics at one place , designing at another and take it to third party for development. In this kind of approach none of the team takes the responsibility of understanding the integrity of website and will be interested in finishing their task only. Therefore it is important for developers and designers to work in one team together, in tandem, from the start.

• Lack of understanding of online trading

Online store is totally different than real stores. It is a complete new business. In online stores everything is available at one place, which can reduce the value of expensive products in front of comparatively cheaper product of similar kind even if there is a difference in quality of the product. Since there are lot of options available which are just one click, online trading require attractive offers in order to increase visitors on their site.

• Eagerness

Launching an extensive list of products and services can lead to higher production cost and management issues. It’s better to launch a project in stages, having previously estimated the costs of each stage.

Search Engine optimization(SEO)

Search engine optimization is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic rather than direct traffic or paid traffic.

It is important to understand the process of SEO because it is a fundamental part of digital marketing. Greater the visibility and ranking greater would be your reach to the consumers.

Conclusion

• Educate your clients on why websites fail and get them to work together with you to minimize downtime.
• Educate your clients on how to communicate effectively with you when they experience things going wrong with their site.
• Make sure that all the supported software or plugins are updated with the latest versions.
• Lock down your server as much as possible
• Ensure that all server maintenance is scheduled when user traffic is less and clients are proactively informed when their site will be down.

Think like a businessman, but look at your site through the eyes of the user!